The Reversal

Twenty-five

Monday, April 5, 9:00 A.M .

I watched the jury file in and take their assigned seats in the box. I watched them closely, keying on their eyes mostly. Checking for how they looked at the defendant. You can learn a lot from that; a furtive glance or a strong judgmental stare.

Jury selection had gone as scheduled. We went through the first panel of ninety prospective jurors in a day but had sat only eleven after most were eliminated because of their media knowledge of the case. The second panel was just as difficult to choose from and it wasn’t until Friday evening at five-forty that we had our final eighteen.

I had my jury chart in front of me, and my eyes were jumping between the faces in the box and the names on my Post-its, trying to memorize who was who. I already had a good handle on most of them but I wanted the names to become second nature to me. I wanted to be able to look at them and address them as if they were friends and neighbors.

The judge was on the bench and ready to go at nine sharp. She first asked the attorneys if there was any new or unfinished business to address. Upon learning there was not, she called in the jurors.

“Okay, we are all here,” she said. “I want to thank all of the jurors and other parties for being on time. We begin the trial with opening statements from the attorneys. These are not to be construed as evidence but merely-”

The judge stopped, her eyes fixed on the back row of the jury box. A woman had timidly raised her hand. The judge stared for a long moment and then checked her own seating chart before responding.

“Ms. Tucci? Do you have a question?”

I checked my chart. Number ten, Carla Tucci. She was one of the jurors I had not yet committed to memory. A mousy brunette from East Hollywood. She was thirty-two years old, unmarried and she worked as a receptionist at a medical clinic. According to my color-coded chart, I had her down as a juror who could be swayed by stronger personalities on the panel. This was not a bad thing. It just depended on whether those personalities were for a guilty verdict or not.

“I think I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see,” she said in a frightened voice.

Judge Breitman hung her head for a moment and I knew why. She couldn’t get the wheels out of the mud. We were ready to go and now the trial would be delayed before opening statements were even in the record.

“Okay, let’s try to take care of this quickly. I want the jury to stay in place. Everyone else stay in place and Ms. Tucci and the attorneys and I will go quickly back to chambers to find out what this is about.”

As we got up I checked my jury chart. There were six alternates. I had three of them pegged as pro-prosecution, two in the middle and one siding with the defense. If Tucci was ejected for whatever misconduct she was about to reveal, her replacement would be chosen randomly from the alternates. This meant that I had a better-than-even chance of seeing her replaced with a juror who was partial to the prosecution and only a one in six chance of getting a juror who was pro-defense. As I followed the entourage into chambers I decided that I liked my chances and I would do what I could to have Tucci ejected from the panel.

In chambers, the judge didn’t even go behind her desk, perhaps hoping this was only going to be a minor question and delay. We stood in a group in the middle of her office. All except the court reporter, who sat on the edge of a side chair so she could type.

“Okay, on the record,” the judge said. “Ms. Tucci, please tell us what you saw and what is bothering you.”

The juror looked down at the ground and held her hands in front of her.

“I was riding on the Metro this morning and the man sitting across from me was reading the newspaper. He was holding it up and I saw the front page. I didn’t mean to look but I saw a photo of the man on trial and I saw the headline.”

The judge nodded.

“You are talking about Jason Jessup, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What newspaper?”

“I think it was the Times.”

“What did the headline say, Ms. Tucci?”

“New trial, old evidence for Jessup.”

I hadn’t seen the actual L.A. Times that morning but had read the story online. Citing an unnamed source close to the prosecution, the story said the case against Jason Jessup was expected to be comprised entirely of evidence from the first trial and leaning heavily on the identification provided by the victim’s sister. Kate Salters had the byline on it.

“Did you read the story, Ms. Tucci?” Breitman asked.

“No, Judge, I just saw it for a second and when I saw his picture I looked away. You told us not to read anything about the case. It just kind of popped up in front of me.”

The judge nodded thoughtfully.

“Okay, Ms. Tucci, can you step back into the hallway for a moment?”

The juror stepped out and the judge closed the door.

“The headline tells the story, doesn’t it?” she said.

She looked at Royce and then me, seeing if either of us was going to make a motion or a suggestion. Royce said nothing. My guess was that he had juror number ten pegged the same way that I did. But he might not have considered the leanings of the six alternates.

“I think the damage is done here, Judge,” I said. “She knows there was a previous trial. Anybody with any basic knowledge of the court system knows they don’t retry you if you get a not-guilty. So she’ll know Jessup went down on a guilty before. As much as that prejudices things in the prosecution’s favor, I think to be fair she has to go.”

Breitman nodded.

“Mr. Royce?”

“I would agree with Mr. Haller’s assessment of the prejudice, not his so-called desire to be fair. He simply wants her off the jury and one of those churchgoing alternates on it.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“I won’t dignify that with a response. You don’t want to kick her off, that’s fine with me.”

“But it’s not counsel’s choice,” the judge said.

She opened the door and invited the juror back in.

“Ms. Tucci, thank you for your honesty. You can go back to the jury room and gather your things. You are dismissed and can report back to the juror assembly room to check with them.”

Tucci hesitated.

“Does that mean-?”

“Yes, unfortunately, you are dismissed. That headline gives you knowledge of the case you should not have. For you to know that Mr. Jessup was previously tried for these crimes is prejudicial. Therefore, I cannot keep you on the jury. You may go now.”

“I’m sorry, Judge.”

“Yes, so am I.”

Tucci left the chambers with her shoulders slumped and with the hesitant walk of someone who has been accused of a crime. After the door closed, the judge looked at us.

“If nothing else, this will send the right message to the rest of the jury. We’re now down to five alternates and we haven’t even started. But we now clearly see how the media can impact our trial. I have not read this story but I will. And if I see anyone in this room quoted in it I am going to be very disappointed. There are usually consequences for those who disappoint me.”

“Judge,” Royce said. “I read the story this morning and no one here is quoted by name but it does attribute information to a source close to the prosecution. I was planning to bring this to your attention.”

I shook my head.

“And that’s the oldest defense trick in the book. Cut a deal with a reporter to hide behind the story. A source close to the prosecution? He’s sitting four feet across the aisle from me. That was probably close enough for the reporter.”

“Your Honor!” Royce blurted. “I had nothing to-”

“We’re holding up the trial,” Breitman said, cutting him off. “Let’s get back to court.”

We trudged back. As we went back into the courtroom I scanned the gallery and saw Salters, the reporter, in the second row. I quickly looked away, hoping my brief eye contact had not revealed anything. I had been her source. My goal was to manipulate the story-the scene setter, as the reporter had called it-into being something that gave the defense false confidence. I hadn’t intended it as a means of changing the makeup of the jury.

Back on the bench, the judge wrote something on a pad and then turned and addressed the jury, once again warning the panelists about reading the newspaper or watching television news programs. She then turned to her clerk.

“Audrey, the candy bowl, please.”

The clerk then took the bowl of individually wrapped sourballs off the counter in front of her desk, dumped the candy into a drawer, and took the bowl to the judge. The judge tore a page from her notebook, tore it again into six pieces and wrote on each piece.

“I have written the numbers one through six on pieces of paper and I will now randomly select an alternate to take juror number ten’s seat on the panel.”

She folded the pieces of paper and dropped them into the bowl. She then swirled the bowl in her hand and raised it over her head. With her other hand she withdrew one piece of paper, unfolded it and read it out loud.

“Alternate number six,” Breitman said. “Would you please move with any belongings you might have to seat number ten in the jury box. Thank you.”

I could do nothing but sit and watch. The new juror number ten was a thirty-six-year-old film and television extra named Philip Kirns. Being an extra probably meant that he was an actor who had not yet been successful. He took jobs as a background extra to make ends meet. That meant that every day, he went to work and stood around and watched those who had made it. This put him on the bitter side of the gulf between the haves and have-nots. And this would make him partial to the defense-the underdog facing off against the Man. I had him down as a red juror and now I was stuck with him.

Maggie whispered into my ear at the prosecution table as we watched Kirns take his new seat.

“I hope you didn’t have anything to do with that story, Haller. Because I think we just lost a vote.”

I raised my hands in a not me gesture but it didn’t look like she was buying it.

The judge turned her chair fully toward the jury.

“Finally, I believe we are ready to start,” she said. “We begin with the opening statements from the attorneys. These statements are not to be taken as evidence. These statements are merely an opportunity for the prosecution and defense to tell the jury what they expect the evidence will show. It is an outline of what you can expect to see and hear during the trial. And it is incumbent upon counsel to then present evidence and testimony that you will later weigh during deliberations. We start with the prosecution statement. Mr. Haller?”

I stood up and went to the lectern that was positioned between the prosecution table and the jury box. I took no legal pad, 3 × 5 cards or anything else with me. I believed that it was important first to sell myself to the jury, then my case. To do that I could not look away from them. I needed to be direct, open and honest the whole time. Besides, my statement was going to be brief and to the point. I didn’t need notes.

I started by introducing myself and then Maggie. I next pointed to Harry Bosch who was seated against the rail behind the prosecution table and introduced him as the case investigator. Then I got down to business.

“We are here today about one thing. To speak for someone who can no longer speak for herself. Twelve-year-old Melissa Landy was abducted from her front yard in nineteen eighty-six. Her body was found just a few hours later, discarded in a Dumpster like a bag of trash. She had been strangled. The man accused of this horrible crime sits there at the defense table.”

I pointed the finger of accusation at Jessup, just as I had seen prosecutor after prosecutor point it at my clients over the years. It felt falsely righteous of me to point a finger at anyone, even a murderer. But that didn’t stop me. Not only did I point at Jessup but I pointed again and again as I summarized the case, telling the jury of the witnesses I would call and what they would say and show. I moved along quickly, making sure to mention the eyewitness who identified Melissa’s abductor and the finding of the victim’s hair in Jessup’s tow truck. I then brought it around to a big finish.

“Jason Jessup took the life of Melissa Landy,” I said. “He grabbed her in the front yard and took her away from her family and this world forever. He put his hand around this beautiful little girl’s throat and choked the life out of her. He robbed her of her past and of her future. He robbed her of everything. And the state will prove this to you beyond a reasonable doubt.”

I nodded once to underline the promise and then returned to my seat. The judge had told us the day before to be brief in our openers, but even she seemed surprised by my brevity. It took her a moment to realize I was finished. She then told Royce he was up.

As I expected he would, Royce deferred to the second half, meaning he reserved his opening statement until the start of the defense’s case. That put the judge’s focus back on me.

“Very well, then. Mr. Haller, call your first witness.”

I went back to the lectern, this time carrying notes and printouts. I had spent most of the previous week before jury selection preparing the questions I would ask my witnesses. As a defense attorney I am used to cross-examining the state’s witnesses and picking at the testimony brought forward by the prosecutor. It’s a task quite different from direct examination and building the foundation for the introduction of evidence and exhibits. I fully acknowledge that it is easier to knock something down than to build it in the first place. But in this case I would be the builder and I came prepared.

“The People call William Johnson.”

I turned to the back of the courtroom. As I had gone to the lectern Bosch had left the courtroom to retrieve Johnson from a witness waiting room. He now returned with the man in tow. Johnson was small and thin with a dark mahogany complexion. He was fifty-nine but his pure white hair made him look older. Bosch walked him through the gate and then pointed him in the direction of the witness stand. He was quickly sworn in by the court clerk.

I had to admit to myself that I was nervous. I felt what Maggie had tried to describe to me on more than one occasion when we were married. She always called it the burden of proof. Not the legal burden. But the psychic burden of knowing that you stood as representative of all the people. I had always dismissed her explanations as self-serving. The prosecutor was always the overdog. The Man. There was no burden in that, at least nothing compared to the burden of the defense attorney, who stands all alone and holds someone’s freedom in his hands. I never understood what she was trying to tell me.

Until now.

Now I got it. I felt it. I was about to question my first witness in front of the jury and I was as nervous as I had been at my first trial out of law school.

“Good morning, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “How are you, sir?”

“I am good, yes.”

“That’s good. Can you tell me, sir, what you do for a living?”

“Yes, sir. I am head of operations for the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard.”

“ ‘Head of operations,’ what does that mean?”

“I make sure everything works right and runs-from the stage lights to the toilets, it’s all part of my job. Mind you, I have electricians work on the lights and plumbers work on the toilets.”

His answer was greeted with polite smiles and modest laughter. He spoke with a slight Caribbean accent but his words were clear and understandable.

“How long have you worked at the El Rey, Mr. Johnson?”

“For going on thirty-six years now. I started in nineteen seventy-four.”

“Wow, that’s an achievement. Congratulations. Have you been head of operations for all that time?”

“No, I worked my way up. I started as a janitor.”

“I would like to draw your attention back to nineteen eighty-six. You were working there then, correct?”

“Yes, sir. I was a janitor back then.”

“Okay, and do you remember the date of February sixteenth of that year in particular?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It was a Sunday.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Can you tell the court why?”

“That was the day I found the body of a little girl in the trash bin out back of the El Rey. That was a terrible day.”

I checked the jury. All eyes were on my witness. So far so good.

“I can imagine that being a terrible day, Mr. Johnson. Now, can you tell us what it was that brought you to discover the body of the little girl?”

“We were working on a project in the theater. We were putting new drywall into the ladies’ room on account of a leak. So I took a wheelbarrow full of the stuff we had demoed-the old wall and some rotting wood and such-and wheeled it out to put in the Dumpster. I opened the top and there this poor little girl was.”

“She was on top of the debris already in the trash bin?”

“That’s right.”

“Was she covered at all with any trash or debris?”

“No, sir, not at all.”

“As if whoever threw her in there had been in a hurry and didn’t have time to cover-”

“Objection!”

Royce had jumped to his feet. I knew he would object. But I had almost gotten the whole sentence-and its suggestion-to the jury.

“Mr. Haller is leading the witness and asking for conclusions for which he would have no expertise,” Royce said.

I withdrew the question before the judge could sustain the objection. There was no sense in having the judge side with the defense in front of the jury.

“Mr. Johnson, was that the first trip you had made to the trash bin that day?”

“No, sir. I had been out there two times before.”

“Before the trip during which you found the body, when had you last been to the trash bin?”

“About ninety minutes before.”

“Did you see a body on top of the trash in the bin that time?”

“No, there was no body there.”

“So it had to have been placed in that bin in the ninety minutes prior to you finding it, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Okay, Mr. Johnson, if I could draw your attention to the screen.”

The courtroom was equipped with two large flat-screen monitors mounted high on the wall opposite the jury box. One screen was slightly angled toward the gallery to allow courtroom observers to see the digital presentations as well. Maggie controlled what appeared on the screens through a PowerPoint program on her laptop computer. She had constructed the presentation over the last two weeks and weekends as we choreographed the prosecution’s case. All of the old photos from the case files had been scanned and loaded into the program. She now put up the trial’s first photo exhibit. A shot of the trash bin Melissa Landy’s body had been found in.

“Does that look like the trash bin in which you found the little girl’s body, Mr. Johnson?”

“That’s it.”

“What makes you so sure, sir?”

“The address-fifty-five fifteen-spray-painted on the side like that. I did that. That’s the address. And I can tell that’s the back of the El Rey. I’ve worked there a long time.”

“Okay, and is this what you saw when you raised the top and looked inside?”

Maggie moved to the next photo. The courtroom was already quiet but it seemed to me that it grew absolutely silent when the photo of Melissa Landy’s body in the trash bin went up on the screens. Under the existing rules of evidence as carved by a recent ruling by the Ninth District, I had to find ways of bringing old evidence and exhibits to the present jury. I could not rely on investigative records. I had to find people who were bridges to the past and Johnson was the first bridge.

Johnson didn’t answer my question at first. He just stared like everyone else in the courtroom. Then, unexpectedly, a tear rolled down his dark cheek. It was perfect. If I had been at the defense table I would have viewed it with cynicism. But I knew Johnson’s response was heartfelt and it was why I had made him my first witness.

“That’s her,” he finally said. “That’s what I saw.”

I nodded as Johnson blessed himself.

“And what did you do when you saw her?”

“We didn’t have no cell phones back then, you see. So I ran back inside and I called nine-one-one on the stage phone.”

“And the police came quickly?”

“They came real quick, like they were already looking for her.”

“One final question, Mr. Johnson. Could you see that trash bin from Wilshire Boulevard?”

Johnson shook his head emphatically.

“No, it was behind the theater and you could only see it if you drove back there and down the little alley.”

I hesitated here. I had more to bring out from this witness. Information not presented in the first trial but gathered by Bosch during his reinvestigation. It was information that Royce might not be aware of. I could just ask the question that would draw it out or I could roll the dice and see if the defense opened a door on cross-examination. The information would be the same either way, but it would have greater weight if the jury believed the defense had tried to hide it.

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” I finally said. “I have no further questions.”

The witness was turned over to Royce, who went to the lectern as I sat down.

“Just a few questions,” he said. “Did you see who put the victim’s body in the bin?”

“No, I did not,” Johnson said.

“So when you called nine-one-one you had no idea who did it, is that correct?”

“Correct.”

“Before that day, had you ever seen the defendant before?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Thank you.”

And that was it. Royce had performed a typical cross of a witness who had little value to the defense. Johnson couldn’t identify the murderer, so Royce got that on the record. But he should have just let Johnson pass. By asking if Johnson had ever seen Jessup before the murder, he opened a door. I stood back up so I could go through it.

“Redirect, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

“Briefly, Your Honor. Mr. Johnson, back during this period that we’re talking about, did you often work on Sundays?”

“No, it was my day off usually. But if we had some special projects I would be told to come in.”

Royce objected on the grounds that I was opening up a line of questioning that was outside the scope of his cross-examination. I promised the judge that it was within the scope and that it would become apparent soon. She indulged me and overruled the objection. I went back to Mr. Johnson. I had hoped Royce would object because in a few moments it would look like he had been trying to stop me from getting to information damaging to Jessup.

“You mentioned that the trash bin where you found the body was at the end of an alley. Is there no parking lot behind the El Rey Theatre?”

“There is a parking lot but it does not belong to the El Rey Theatre. We have the alley that gives us access to the back doors and the bins.”

“Who does the parking lot belong to?”

“A company that has lots all over the city. It’s called City Park.”

“Is there a wall or a fence separating this parking lot from the alley?”

Royce stood again.

“Your Honor, this is going on and on and it has nothing to do with what I asked Mr. Johnson.”

“Your Honor,” I said. “I will get there in two more questions.”

“You may answer, Mr. Johnson,” Breitman said.

“There is a fence,” Johnson said.

“So,” I said, “from the El Rey’s alley and the location of its trash bin, you can see into the adjoining parking lot, and anyone in the adjoining parking lot could see the trash bin, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And prior to the day you discovered the body, did you have occasion to be at work on a Sunday and to notice that the parking lot behind the theater was being used?”

“Yes, like a month previously, I came to work and in the back there were many cars and I saw tow trucks towing them in.”

I couldn’t help myself. I had to glance over at Royce and Jessup to see if they were squirming yet. I was about to draw the first blood of the trial. They thought Johnson was going to be a noncritical witness, meaning he would establish the murder and its location and nothing else.

They were wrong.

“Did you inquire as to what was going on?” I asked.

“Yes,” Johnson said. “I asked what they were doing and one of the drivers said that they were towing cars from the neighborhood down the street and holding them there so people could come and pay and get their cars.”

“So it was being used like a temporary holding lot, is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“And did you know what the name of the towing company was?”

“It was on the trucks. It was called Aardvark Towing.”

“You said trucks. You saw more than one truck there?”

“Yeah, there were two or three trucks when I saw them.”

“What did you tell them after you were informed what they were doing there?”

“I told my boss and he called City Park to see if they knew about it. He thought there could be an insurance concern, especially with people being mad about being towed and all. And it turned out Aardvark wasn’t supposed to be there. It wasn’t authorized.”

“What happened?”

“They had to stop using the lot and my boss told me to keep an eye out if I worked on weekends to see if they kept using it.”

“So they stopped using the lot behind the theater?”

“That’s right.”

“And this was the same lot from which you could see the trash bin in which you would later find the body of Melissa Landy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When Mr. Royce asked you if you had ever seen the defendant before the day of the murder, you answered that you didn’t think so, correct?”

“Correct.”

“You don’t think so? Why are you not sure?”

“Because I think he could’ve been one of the Aardvark drivers I saw using that lot. So I can’t be sure I didn’t see him before.”

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson. I have no further questions.”

Twenty-six

Monday, April 5, 10:20 A.M .

For the first time since he had been brought into the case Bosch felt as though Melissa Landy was in good hands. He had just watched Mickey Haller score the first points of the trial. He had taken a small piece of the puzzle Bosch had come up with and used it to land the first punch. It wasn’t a knockout by any means but it had connected solidly. It was the first step down the path of proving Jason Jessup’s familiarity with the parking lot and trash bin behind the El Rey Theatre. Before the trial would end, its importance would be made clear to the jury. But what was even more significant to Bosch at the moment was the way Haller had used the information Harry had provided. He had hung it on the defense, made it look as though it had been their attempt to obfuscate the facts of the case that drew the information out. It was a smooth move and it gave Bosch a big boost in his confidence in Haller as a prosecutor.

He met Johnson at the gate and walked him out of the courtroom to the hallway, where he shook his hand.

“You did real good in there, Mr. Johnson. We can’t thank you enough.”

“You already have. Convicting that man of killing that little girl.”

“Well, we’re not quite there yet but that’s the plan. Except most people who read the paper think we’re going after an innocent man.”

“No, you got the right man. I can tell.”

Bosch nodded and felt awkward.

“You take care, Mr. Johnson.”

“Detective, your music is jazz, right?”

Bosch had already turned to go back to the courtroom. Now he looked back at Johnson.

“How’d you know that?”

“Just a guess. We got jazz acts that come through. New Orleans jazz. You ever want tickets to a show at the El Rey, you look me up.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks.”

Bosch pushed through the doors leading back into the courtroom. He was smiling, thinking about Johnson’s guess about his music. If he was right about that, then maybe he would be right about the jury convicting Jessup. As he moved down the aisle, he heard the judge telling Haller to call his next witness.

“The state calls Regina Landy.”

Bosch knew he was on. This part had been choreographed a week earlier by the judge and over the objection of the defense. Regina Landy was unavailable to testify because she was dead, but she had testified in the first trial and the judge had ruled that her testimony could be read to the current jurors.

Breitman now turned to the jurors to offer the explanation, guarding against revealing any hint that there had been an earlier trial.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the state has called a witness who is no longer available to testify. However, previously she gave sworn testimony that we will read to you today. You are not to consider why this witness is unable to testify or where this previous sworn testimony is from. Your concern is the testimony itself. I should add that I have decided to allow this over the objection of the defense. The U.S. Constitution holds that the accused is entitled to question his accusers. However, as you will see, this witness was indeed questioned by an attorney who previously represented Mr. Jessup.”

She turned back to the court.

“You may proceed, Mr. Haller.”

Haller called Bosch to the stand. He was sworn in and then took the seat, pulling the microphone into position. He opened the blue binder he had carried with him and Haller began.

“Detective Bosch, can you tell us a little bit about your experience as a law enforcement officer?”

Bosch turned toward the jury box and moved his eyes over the faces of the jurors as he answered. He did not leave the alternates out.

“I have been a sworn officer for thirty-six years. I have spent more than twenty-five of those years working homicides. I have been the lead investigator in more than two hundred murder investigations in that time.”

“And you are the lead investigator on this case?”

“Yes, I am now. I did not take part in the original investigation, however. I came into this case in February of this year.”

“Thank you, Detective. We will be talking about your investigation later in the trial. Are you prepared to read the sworn testimony of Regina Landy taken on October seventh, nineteen eighty-six?”

“I am.”

“Okay, I will read the questions that were posed at the time by Deputy District Attorney Gary Lintz and defense counsel Charles Barnard and you will read the responses from the witness. We start with direct examination from Mr. Lintz.”

Haller paused and studied the transcript in front of him. Bosch wondered if there would be any confusion from his reading the responses of a woman. In deciding to allow the testimony the week before, the judge had disallowed any reference to emotions described as having been exhibited by Regina Landy. Bosch knew from the transcript that she was crying throughout her testimony. But he would not be able to communicate that to the present jurors.

“Here we go,” Haller said. “ ‘Mrs. Landy, can you please describe your relationship with the victim, Melissa Landy.’ ”

“ ‘I am her mother,’ ” Bosch read. “ ‘She was my daughter… until she was taken away from me.’ ”

Twenty-seven

Monday, April 5, 1:45 P.M .

The reading of Regina Landy’s testimony from the first trial took us right up to lunch. The testimony was needed to establish who the victim was and who had identified her. But without the incumbent emotion of a parent’s testimony, the reading by Bosch was largely procedural, and while the first witness of the day brought reason to be hopeful, the second witness was about as anticlimactic as a voice from the grave could possibly be. I imagined that Bosch’s reading of Regina Landy’s words was confusing to the jurors when they were not provided with any explanation for her absence from the trial of her daughter’s alleged killer.

The prosecution team had lunch at Duffy’s, which was close enough to the CCB to be convenient but far enough away that we wouldn’t have to worry about jurors finding the same place to eat. Nobody was ecstatic about the start of the trial but that was to be expected. I had planned the presentation of evidence like the unfolding of Scheherazade, the symphonic suite that starts slow and quiet and builds to an all-encompassing crescendo of sound and music and emotion.

The first day was about the proof of facts. I had to bring forward the body. I had to establish that there was a victim, that she had been taken from her home and later found dead and that she had been murdered. I had hit two of those facts with the first witnesses, and now the afternoon witness, the medical examiner, would complete the proof. The prosecution’s case would then shift toward the accused and the evidence that tied him to the crime. That would be when my case would really come to life.

Only Bosch and I came back from lunch. Maggie had gone over to the Checkers Hotel to spend the afternoon with our star witness, Sarah Ann Gleason. Bosch had gone up to Washington on Saturday and flown down with her Sunday morning. She wasn’t scheduled to testify until Wednesday morning but I had wanted her close and I had wanted Maggie to spend as much time as possible prepping her for her part in the trial. Maggie had already been up to Washington twice to spend time with her but I believed that any time they could spend together would continue to promote the bond I wanted them to have and the jury to see.

Maggie left us reluctantly. She was concerned that I would make a misstep in court without her there watching over me as my second. I assured her that I could handle the direct examination of a medical examiner and would call her if I ran into trouble. Little did I know how important this witness’s testimony would come to be.

The afternoon session got off to a late start while we waited ten minutes for a juror who did not return from lunch on time. Once the panel was assembled and returned to court, Judge Breitman lectured the jurors again on timeliness and ordered them to eat as a group for the remainder of the trial. She also ordered the courtroom deputy to escort them to lunch. This way no one would stray from the pack and no one would be late.

Finished with the lunch business, the judge gruffly ordered me to call my next witness. I nodded to Bosch and he headed to the witness room to retrieve David Eisenbach.

The judge grew impatient as we waited but it took Eisenbach a few minutes longer than most witnesses to make his way into the courtroom and to the witness stand. Eisenbach was seventy-nine years old and walked with a cane. He also carried a pillow with a handle on it, as if he were going to a USC football game at the Coliseum. After being sworn in he placed the pillow on the hard wood of the witness chair and then sat down.

“Dr. Eisenbach,” I began, “can you tell the jury what you do for a living?”

“Currently I am semiretired and derive an income from being an autopsy consultant. A gun for hire, you lawyers like to call it. I review autopsies for a living and then tell lawyers and juries what the medical examiner did right and did wrong.”

“And before you were semiretired, what did you do?”

“I was assistant medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles. Had that job for thirty years.”

“As such you conducted autopsies?”

“Yes, sir, I did. In thirty years I conducted over twenty thousand autopsies. That’s a lot of dead people.”

“That is a lot, Dr. Eisenbach. Do you remember them all?”

“Of course not. I remember a handful off the top of my head. The rest of them I would need my notes to remember.”

After receiving permission from the judge I approached the witness stand and put down a forty-page document.

“I draw your attention to the document I have placed before you. Can you identify it?”

“Yes, it’s an autopsy protocol dated February eighteenth, nineteen eighty-six. The deceased is listed as Melissa Theresa Landy. My name is also on it. It is one of mine.”

“Meaning you conducted the autopsy?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

I followed this with a series of questions that established the autopsy procedures and the general health of the victim prior to death. Royce objected several times to what he termed leading questions. Few of these were sustained by the judge but that was not the point. Royce had adopted the tactic of attempting to get me out of rhythm by incessantly interrupting, whether such interruptions were valid or not.

Working around these interruptions, Eisenbach was able to testify that Melissa Landy was in perfect health until the moment of her violent death. He said she had not been sexually attacked in any determinable way. He said there was no indication of prior sexual activity-she was a virgin. He said the cause of her death was asphyxiation. He said the evidence of crushed bones in her neck and throat indicated she had been choked by a powerful force-a man’s single hand.

Using a laser pointer to mark locations on photographs of the body taken at autopsy, Eisenbach identified a bruise pattern on the victim’s neck that was indicative of a one-handed choke hold. With the laser point he delineated a thumb mark on the right side of the girl’s neck and the larger, four-finger mark on the left side.

“Doctor, did you make a determination of which hand the killer used to choke the victim to death?”

“Yes, it was quite simple to determine the killer had used the right hand to choke this girl to death.”

“Just one hand?”

“That is correct.”

“Was there any determination of how this was done? Had the girl been suspended while she was choked?”

“No, the injuries, particularly the crushed bones, indicated that the killer put his hand on her neck and pressed her against a surface that offered resistance.”

“Could that have been the seat of a vehicle?”

“Yes.”

“How about a man’s leg?”

Royce objected, saying the question called for pure speculation. The judge agreed and told me to move on.

“Doctor, you mentioned twenty thousand autopsies. I assume that many of these were homicides involving asphyxiation. Was it unusual to come across a case where only one hand was used to choke a victim to death?”

Royce objected again, this time saying the question asked for an answer outside the witness’s expertise. But the judge went my way.

“The man has conducted twenty thousand autopsies,” she said. “I’m inclined to think that gives him a lot of expertise. I’m going to allow the question.”

“You can answer, Doctor,” I said. “Was this unusual?”

“Not necessarily. Many homicides occur during struggles and other circumstances. I’ve seen it before. If one hand is otherwise occupied, the other must suffice. We are talking about a twelve-year-old girl who weighed ninety-one pounds. She could have been subdued with one hand if the killer needed the left hand for something else.”

“Would driving a vehicle fall into that category?”

“Objection,” Royce said. “Same argument.”

“And same ruling,” Breitman said. “You may answer, Doctor.”

“Yes,” Eisenbach said. “If one hand was being used to maintain control of a vehicle the other hand could be used to choke the victim. That is one possibility.”

At this point I believed I had gotten all that there was to get from Eisenbach. I ended direct examination and handed the witness over to Royce. Unfortunately for me, Eisenbach was a witness who had something for everybody. And Royce went after it.

“ ‘One possibility,’ is that what you called it, Dr. Eisenbach?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said the scenario Mr. Haller described-one hand on the wheel, one hand on the neck-was one possibility. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that is a possibility.”

“But you weren’t there, so you can’t know for sure. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

“Yes, that is right.”

“You said one possibility. What are some of the other possibilities?”

“Well… I wouldn’t know. I was responding to the question from the prosecutor.”

“How about a cigarette?”

“What?”

“Could the killer have been holding a cigarette in his left hand while he choked the girl with his right?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Yes.”

“And how about his penis?”

“His…”

“His penis, Doctor. Could the killer have choked this girl with his right hand while holding his penis with his left?”

“I would have to… yes, that is a possibility, too.”

“He could have been masturbating with one hand while he choked her with the other, correct, Doctor?”

“Anything is possible but there is no indication in the autopsy report that supports this.”

“What about what is not in the file, Doctor?”

“I’m not aware of anything.”

“Is this what you meant about being a hired gun, Doctor? You take the prosecution’s side no matter what the facts are?”

“I don’t always work for prosecutors.”

“I’m happy for you.”

I stood up.

“Your Honor, he’s badgering the witness with-”

“Mr. Royce,” the judge said. “Please keep it civil. And on point.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Doctor, of the twenty thousand autopsies you have performed, how many of them were on victims of sexually motivated violence?”

Eisenbach looked across the floor to me, but there was nothing I could do for him. Bosch had taken Maggie’s place at the prosecution table. He leaned over to me and whispered.

“What’s he doing? Trying to make our case?”

I held up my hand so I would not be distracted from the back-and-forth between Royce and Eisenbach.

“No, he’s making their case,” I whispered back.

Eisenbach still hadn’t answered.

“Doctor,” the judge said, “please answer the question.”

“I don’t have a count but many of them were sexually motivated crimes.”

“Was this one?”

“Based on the autopsy findings I could not make that conclusion. But whenever you have a young child, particularly a female, and there is a stranger abduction, then you are almost always-”

“Move to strike the answer as nonresponsive,” Royce said, cutting the witness off. “The witness is assuming facts not in evidence.”

The judge considered the objection. I stood up, ready to respond but said nothing.

“Doctor, please answer only the question you are asked,” the judge said.

“I thought I was,” Eisenbach said.

“Then let me be more specific,” Royce said. “You found no indications of sexual assault or abuse on the body of Melissa Landy, is that correct, Doctor?”

“That is correct.”

“What about on the victim’s clothing?”

“The body is my jurisdiction. The clothing is analyzed by forensics.”

“Of course.”

Royce hesitated and looked down at his notes. I could tell he was trying to decide how far to take something. It was a case of “so far, so good-do I risk going further?”

Finally, he decided.

“Now, Doctor, a moment ago when I objected to your answer, you called this a stranger abduction. What evidence from the autopsy supported that claim?”

Eisenbach thought for a long moment and even looked down at the autopsy report in front of him.

“Doctor?”

“Uh, there is nothing I recall from the autopsy alone that supports this.”

“Actually, the autopsy supports a conclusion quite the opposite, doesn’t it?”

Eisenbach looked genuinely confused.

“I am not sure what you mean.”

“Can I draw your attention to page eight of the autopsy protocol? The preliminary examination of the body.”

Royce waited a moment until Eisenbach turned to the page. I did as well but didn’t need to. I knew where Royce was going and couldn’t stop him. I just needed to be ready to object at the right moment.

“Doctor, the report states that scrapings of the victim’s fingernails were negative for blood and tissue. Do you see that on page eight?”

“Yes, I scraped her nails but they were clean.”

“This indicates she did not scratch her attacker, her killer. Correct?”

“That would be the indication, yes.”

“And this would also indicate that she knew her attack-”

“Objection!”

I was on my feet but not quick enough. Royce had gotten the suggestion out and to the jury.

“Assumes facts not in evidence,” I said. “Your Honor, defense counsel is clearly attempting to plant seeds with the jury that do not exist.”

“Sustained. Mr. Royce, a warning.”

“Yes, Your Honor. The defense has no further questions for this prosecution witness.”

Twenty-eight

Monday, April 5, 4:45 P.M .

Bosch knocked on the door of room 804 and looked directly at the peephole. The door was quickly opened by McPherson, who was checking her watch as she stood back to let him enter.

“Why aren’t you in court with Mickey?” she asked.

Bosch entered. The room was a suite with a decent view of Grand Avenue and the back of the Biltmore. There was a couch and two chairs, one of them occupied by Sarah Ann Gleason. Bosch nodded his hello.

“Because he doesn’t need me there. I’m needed here.”

“What’s going on?”

“Royce tipped his hand on the defense’s case. I need to talk to Sarah about it.”

He started toward the couch but McPherson put her hand on his arm and stopped him.

“Wait a minute. Before you talk to Sarah you talk to me. What’s going on?”

Bosch nodded. She was right. He looked around but there was no place for private conversation in the suite.

“Let’s take a walk.”

McPherson went to the coffee table and grabbed a key card.

“We’ll be right back, Sarah. Do you need anything?”

“No, I’m fine. I’ll be here.”

She held up a sketchpad. It would keep her company.

Bosch and McPherson left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. There was a bar crowded with pre-happy hour drinkers but they found a private spot in a sitting area by the front door.

“Okay, how did Royce tip his hand?” McPherson asked.

“When he was cross-examining Eisenbach, he riffed off of Mickey’s question about the killer using only his right hand to choke her.”

“Right, while he was driving. He panicked when he heard the call on the police radio and killed her.”

“Right, that’s the prosecution theory. Well, Royce is already setting up a defense theory. On cross he asked whether it was possible that the killer was choking her with one hand while masturbating with the other.”

She was silent as she computed this.

“This is the old prosecution theory,” she said. “From the first trial. That it was murder in the commission of a sex act. Mickey and I sort of figured that once Royce got all the discovery material and learned that the DNA came from the stepfather, the defense would play it this way. They’re setting up the stepfather as the straw man. They’ll say he killed her and the DNA proves it.”

McPherson folded her arms as she worked it out further.

“It’s good but there are two things wrong with it. Sarah and the hair evidence. So we’re missing something. Royce has got to have something or someone who discredits Sarah’s ID.”

“That’s why I’m here. I brought Royce’s witness list. These people have been playing hide-and-seek with me and I haven’t run them all down. Sarah’s got to look at this list and tell me which one I need to focus on.”

“How the hell will she know?”

“She’s got to. These are her people. Boyfriends, husbands, fellow tweakers. All of them have records. They’re the people she hung out with before she got straight. Every address is a last-known and worthless. Royce has got to be hiding them.”

McPherson nodded.

“That’s why they call him Clever Clive. Okay, let’s talk to her. Let me try first, okay?”

She stood up.

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said.

She looked at him.

“What is it?”

“What if the defense theory is the right one?”

“Are you kidding me?”

He didn’t answer and she didn’t wait long. She headed back toward the elevator. He got up and followed.

They went back to the room. Bosch noticed that Gleason had sketched a tulip on her pad while they had been gone. He sat down on the couch across from her, and McPherson took the chair right next to her.

“Sarah,” McPherson said. “We need to talk. We think that somebody you used to know during those lost years we were talking about is going to try to help the defense. We need to figure out who it is and what they are going to say.”

“I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “But I was thirteen years old when this happened to us. What does it matter who my friends were after?”

“It matters because they can testify about things you might have done. Or said.”

“What things?”

McPherson shook her head.

“That’s what is so frustrating. We don’t really know. We only know that today in court the defense made it clear that they are going to try to put the blame for your sister’s death on your stepfather.”

Sarah raised her hands as if warding off a blow.

“That’s crazy. I was there. I saw that man take her!”

“We know that, Sarah. But it’s a matter of what is conveyed to the jury and what and who the jurors believe. Now, Detective Bosch has a list of the defense’s witnesses. I want you to take a look at it and tell us what the names mean to you.”

Bosch pulled the list from his briefcase. He handed it to McPherson, who handed it to Sarah.

“Sorry, all those notes are things I added,” Bosch said, “when I was trying to track them down. Just look at the names.”

Bosch watched her lips move slightly as she started to read. Then they stopped moving and she just stared at the paper. He saw tears in her eyes.

“Sarah?” McPherson prompted.

“These people,” Gleason said in a whisper. “I thought I’d never see them again.”

“You may never see them again,” McPherson said. “Just because they’re on that list, it doesn’t mean they’ll be called. They pull names out of the records and load up the list to confuse us, Sarah. It’s called haystacking. They hide the real witnesses, and our investigator-Detective Bosch-wastes his time checking out the wrong people. But there’s got to be at least one name on there that counts. Who is it, Sarah? Help us.”

She stared at the list without responding.

“Someone who will be able to say you two were close. Who you spent time with and told secrets to.”

“I thought a husband couldn’t testify against a wife.”

“One spouse can’t be forced to testify against the other. But what are you talking about, Sarah?”

“This one.”

She pointed to a name on the list. Bosch leaned over to read it. Edward Roman. Bosch had traced him to a lockdown rehab center in North Hollywood where Sarah had spent nine months after her last incarceration. The only thing Bosch had guessed was that they’d had contact in group therapy. The last known address provided by Royce was a motel in Van Nuys but Roman was long gone from there. Bosch had gotten no further with it and had dismissed the name as part of Royce’s haystack.

“Roman,” he said. “You were with him in rehab, right?”

“Yes,” Gleason said. “Then we got married.”

“When?” McPherson said. “We have no record of that marriage.”

“After we got out. He knew a minister. We got married on the beach. But it didn’t last very long.”

“Did you get divorced?” McPherson asked.

“No… I never really cared. Then when I got straight I just didn’t want to go back there. It was one of those things you block out. Like it didn’t happen.”

McPherson looked at Bosch.

“It might not have been a legal marriage,” he said. “There’s nothing in the county records.”

“Doesn’t matter if it was a legal marriage or not,” she said. “He is obviously a volunteer witness, so he can testify against her. What matters is what his testimony is going to be. What’s he going to say, Sarah?”

Sarah slowly shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what did you tell him about your sister and your stepfather?”

“I don’t know. Those years… I can hardly remember anything from back then.”

There was a silence and then McPherson asked Sarah to look at the rest of the names on the list. She did and shook her head.

“I don’t know who some of these people are. Some people in the life, I just knew them by street names.”

“But Edward Roman you know?”

“Yes. We were together.”

“How long?”

Gleason shook her head in embarrassment.

“Not long. Inside rehab we thought we were made for each other. Once we were out, it didn’t work. It lasted maybe three months. I got arrested again and when I got out of jail, he was gone.”

“Is it possible that it wasn’t a legitimate marriage?”

Gleason thought for a moment and halfheartedly shrugged.

“Anything is possible, I guess.”

“Okay, Sarah, I’m going to step out with Detective Bosch again for a few minutes. I want you to think about Edward Roman. Anything you can remember will be helpful. I’ll be right back.”

McPherson took the witness list from her and handed it back to Bosch. They left the room but just took a few paces down the hallway before stopping and talking in whispers.

“I guess you’d better find him,” she said.

“It won’t matter,” Bosch said. “If he’s Royce’s star witness he won’t talk to me.”

“Then find out everything you can about him. So when the time comes we can destroy him.”

“Got it.”

Bosch turned and headed down the hall toward the elevators. McPherson called after him. He stopped and looked back.

“Did you mean it?” McPherson asked.

“Mean what?”

“What you said down in the lobby. What you asked. You think twenty-four years ago she made it all up?”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what about the hair in the truck? Doesn’t that tie her story in?”

Bosch held a hand up empty.

“It’s circumstantial. And I wasn’t there when they found it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means sometimes things happen when the victim is a child. And that I wasn’t there when they found it.”

“Boy, maybe you should be working for the defense.”

Bosch dropped his hand to his side.

“I’m sure they’ve thought of all of this already.”

He turned back toward the elevators and headed down the hallway.

Twenty-nine

Tuesday, April 6, 9:00 A.M .

Sometimes the wheels of justice roll smoothly. The second day of trial started exactly as scheduled. The full jury was in the box, the judge was on the bench and Jason Jessup and his attorney were seated at the defense table. I stood and called my first witness of what I hoped would be a productive day for the prosecution. Harry Bosch even had Izzy Gordon in the courtroom ready to go. By five minutes after the hour, she was sworn in and seated. She was a small woman with black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes. My records said she was fifty years old but she looked older.

“Ms. Gordon, can you tell the jury what you do for a living?”

“Yes. I am a forensic technician and crime scene supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been so employed in the forensics unit since nineteen eighty-six.”

“Were you so employed on February sixteenth of that year?”

“Yes, I was. It was my first day of work.”

“And what was your assignment on that day?”

“My job was to learn. I was assigned to a crime scene supervisor and I was to get on-the-job training.”

Izzy Gordon was a major find for the prosecution. Two technicians and a supervisor had worked the three separate crime scenes relating to the Melissa Landy case-the home on Windsor, the trash bin behind the El Rey and the tow truck driven by Jessup. Gordon had been assigned to be at the supervisor’s side and therefore had been in attendance at all three crime scenes. The supervisor was long since dead and the other techs were retired and unable to offer testimony about all three locations. Finding Gordon allowed me to streamline the introduction of crime scene evidence.

“Who was that supervisor?”

“That was Art Donovan.”

“And you got a call out with him that day?”

“Yes, we did. An abduction that turned into a homicide. We ended up going from scene to scene to scene that day. Three related locations.”

“Okay, let’s take those scenes one at a time.”

Over the next ninety minutes I walked Gordon through her Sunday tour of crime scenes on February 16, 1986. Using her as the conduit, I could deliver crime scene photographs, videos and evidence reports. Royce continued his tack of objecting at will in an effort to prevent the unimpeded flow of information to the jury. But he was scoreless and getting under the judge’s skin. I could tell, and so I did not complain. I wanted that annoyance to fester. It might come in handy later.

Gordon’s testimony was fairly pedestrian as she first discussed the unsuccessful efforts to find shoe prints and other trace evidence on the front lawn of the Landy’s house. It turned more dramatic when she recalled being urgently called to a new crime scene-the trash bin behind the El Rey.

“We were called when they found the body. It was handled in whispers because the family was there in the house and we did not want to upset them until it was confirmed that there was a body and that it was the little girl.”

“You and Donovan went to the El Rey Theatre?”

“Yes, along with Detective Kloster. We met the assistant medical examiner there. We now had a homicide, so more technicians were called in, too.”

The El Rey portion of Gordon’s testimony was largely an opportunity for me to show more video footage and photographs of the victim on the overhead screens. If nothing else, I wanted every juror in the box to be incensed by what they saw. I wanted to light the fire of one of the basic instincts. Vengeance.

I counted on Royce to object and he did, but by then he had exhausted his welcome with the judge, and his argument that the images were graphic and cumulatively excessive fell on deaf ears. They were allowed.

Finally, Izzy Gordon brought us to the last crime scene-the tow truck-and she described how she had spotted three long hairs caught in the crack that split the bench seat and pointed them out to Donovan for collection.

“What happened to those hairs?” I asked.

“They were individually bagged and tagged and then taken to the Scientific Investigation Division for comparison and analysis.”

Gordon’s testimony was smooth and efficient. When I turned her over to the defense, Royce did the best he could. He did not bother to assail the collection of evidence but merely attempted once again to gain a foothold for the defense theory. In doing so he skipped the first two crime scenes and zeroed in on the tow truck.

“Ms. Gordon, when you got to the Aardvark towing yard, were there police officers already there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How many?”

“I didn’t count but there were several.”

“What about detectives?”

“Yes, there were detectives conducting a search of the whole business under the authority of a search warrant.”

“And were these detectives you had seen earlier at the previous crime scenes?”

“I think so, yes. I would assume so but I do not remember specifically.”

“But you seem to remember other things specifically. Why don’t you remember which detectives you were working with?”

“There were several people working this case. Detective Kloster was the lead investigator but he was dealing with three different locations as well as the girl who was the witness. I don’t remember if he was at the tow yard when I first arrived but he was there at some point. I think that if you refer to the crime scene attendance logs, you will be able to determine who was at what scene and when.”

“Ah, then we shall do just that.”

Royce approached the witness stand and gave Gordon three documents and a pencil. He then returned to the lectern.

“What are those three documents, Ms. Gordon?”

“These are crime scene attendance logs.”

“And which scenes are they from?”

“The three I worked in regard to the Landy case.”

“Can you please take a moment to study those logs and use the pencil I have given you to circle any name that appears on all three lists.”

It took Gordon less than a minute to complete the task.

“Finished?” Royce asked.

“Yes, there are four names.”

“Can you tell us?”

“Yes, myself and my supervisor, Art Donovan, and then Detective Kloster and his partner, Chad Steiner.”

“You were the only four who were at all three crime scenes that day, correct?”

“That is correct.”

Maggie leaned into me and whispered.

“Cross-scene contamination.”

I shook my head slightly and whispered back.

“That suggests accidental contamination. I think he’s going for intentional planting of evidence.”

Maggie nodded and leaned away. Royce asked his next question.

“Being one of only four who were at all four scenes, you had a keen understanding of this crime and what it meant, isn’t that correct?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Among police personnel, were emotions high at these crime scenes?”

“Well, everyone was very professional.”

“You mean nobody cared that this was a twelve-year-old girl?”

“No, we cared and you could say things were at least tense at the first two scenes. We had the family at one and the dead little girl at the other. I don’t really remember things being emotional at the tow yard.”

Wrong answer, I thought. She had opened a door for the defense.

“Okay,” Royce said, “but you are saying that at the first two scenes the emotions were high, correct?”

I stood up, just to give Royce a dose of his own medicine.

“Objection. Asked and answered already, Your Honor.”

“Sustained.”

Royce was undaunted.

“Then how did these emotions display themselves?” he asked.

“Well, we talked. Art Donovan told me to keep professional detachment. He said we had to do our best work because this had been just a little girl.”

“What about detectives Kloster and Steiner?”

“They said the same thing. That we couldn’t leave any stone unturned, that we had to do it for Melissa.”

“He called the victim by her name?”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“How angry and upset would you say Detective Kloster was?”

I stood and objected.

“Assumes facts not in evidence or testimony.”

The judge sustained it and told Royce to move on.

“Ms. Gordon, can you refer to the crime scene attendance logs still in front of you and tell us if the arrival and departure of law enforcement personnel is kept by time?”

“Yes, it is. There are arrival and departure times listed after each name.”

“You have previously stated that detectives Kloster and Steiner were the only two investigators besides yourself and your supervisor to appear at all three scenes.”

“Yes, they were the lead investigators on the case.”

“Did they arrive at each of the scenes before you and Mr. Donovan?”

It took Gordon a moment to confirm the information on the lists.

“Yes, they did.”

“So they would have had access to the victim’s body before you ever arrived at the El Rey Theatre, correct?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘access’ but, yes, they were on scene first.”

“And so they would have also had access to the tow truck before you got there and saw the three strands of hair conveniently caught in the seat crack, correct?”

I objected, saying the question required the witness to speculate on things she would not have witnessed and was argumentative because of the use of the word “conveniently.” Royce was obviously playing to the jury. The judge told Royce to rephrase the question without taking editorial license.

“The detectives would have had access to the tow truck before you got there and before you were the first to see the three strands of hair lodged in the seat crack, correct?”

Gordon took the hint from my objection and answered the way I wanted her to.

“I don’t know because I wasn’t there.”

Still, Royce had gotten his point across to the jury. He had also gotten the point of his case across to me. It was now fair to assume that the defense would put forth the theory that the police-in the person of Kloster and/or his partner, Steiner-had planted the hair evidence to secure a conviction of Jessup after he had been identified by the thirteen-year-old Sarah. Further to this, the defense would posit that Sarah’s wrongful identification of Jessup was intentional and part of the Landy family’s effort to hide the fact that Melissa had died either accidentally or intentionally at the hands of her stepfather.

It would be a tough road to take. To be successful it would take at least one person on the jury buying into what amounted to two conspiracies working independently of one another and yet in concert. But I could think of only two defense attorneys in town who could pull it off, and Royce was one of them. I had to be prepared.

“What happened after you noticed the hair on the tow truck’s seat, do you remember?” Royce asked the witness.

“I pointed it out to Art because he was doing the actual collection of evidence. I was just there to observe and gather experience.”

“Were detectives Kloster and Steiner called over to take a look?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Do you recall what if anything they did then?”

“I don’t recall them doing anything in relation to the hair evidence. It was their case and so they were notified of the evidence find and that was it.”

“Were you happy with yourself?”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“It was your first day on the job-your first case. Were you pleased with yourself after spotting the hair evidence? Were you proud?”

Gordon hesitated before answering, as if trying to figure out if the question was a trap.

“I was pleased that I had contributed, yes.”

“And did you ever wonder why you, the rookie, spotted the hair in the seat crack before your supervisor or the two lead investigators?”

Gordon hesitated again and then said no. Royce said he had no further questions. It had been an excellent cross, planting multiple seeds that could later bloom into something larger in the defense case.

I did what I could on redirect, asking Gordon to recite the names of the six uniformed police officers and two other detectives who were listed as arriving ahead of Kloster and Steiner on the crime scene attendance log kept at the location where Melissa Landy’s body was found.

“So, hypothetically, if Detective Kloster or Steiner had wanted to take hair from the victim to plant elsewhere, they would have had to do it under the noses of eight other officers or enlist them in allowing them to do it. Is that correct?”

“Yes, it would seem so.”

I thanked the witness and sat down. Royce then went back to the lectern for recross.

“Also hypothetically, if Kloster or Steiner wanted to plant hair from the victim at the third crime scene, it would not have been necessary to take it directly from the victim’s head if there were other sources for it, correct?”

“I guess not if there were other sources.”

“For example, a hairbrush in the victim’s home could have provided hair to them, correct?”

“I guess so.”

“They were in the victim’s home, weren’t they?”

“Yes, that was one of the locations where they signed in.”

“Nothing further.”

Royce had nailed me and I decided not to pursue this any further. Royce would have a comeback no matter what I brought forward from the witness.

Gordon was dismissed and the judge broke for lunch. I told Bosch that he would be on the stand after the break, reading Kloster’s testimony into the record. I asked if he wanted to grab lunch together to talk about the defense’s theory but he said he couldn’t, that he had something to do.

Maggie was heading over to the hotel to have lunch with Sarah Ann Gleason, so that left me on my own.

Or so I thought.

As I headed down the center aisle to the rear door of the courtroom, an attractive woman stepped out of the back row in front of me. She smiled and stepped up to me.

“Mr. Haller, I’m Rachel Walling with the FBI.”

At first it didn’t compute but then the name caught on a memory prompt somewhere inside.

“Yes, the profiler. You distracted my investigator with your theory that Jason Jessup is a serial killer.”

“Well, I hope it was more help than distraction.”

“I guess that remains to be seen. What can I do for you, Agent Walling?”

“I was going to ask if you might have time for lunch. But since you consider me a distraction, then maybe I should just…”

“Guess what, Agent Walling. You’re in luck. I’m free. Let’s have lunch.”

I pointed to the door and we headed out.

Thirty

Tuesday, April 6, 1:15 P.M .

This time it was the judge who was late returning to court. The prosecution and defense teams were seated at the appointed time and ready to go but there was no sign of Breitman. And there had been no indication from the clerk as to whether the delay was because of personal business or some sort of trial issue. Bosch got up from his seat at the railing and approached Haller, tapping him on the back.

“Harry, we’re about to start. You ready?”

“I’m ready, but we need to talk.”

“What’s wrong?”

Bosch turned his body so his back was to the defense table and lowered his voice into a barely audible whisper.

“I went to see the SIS guys at lunch. They showed me some stuff you need to know about.”

He was being overly cryptic. But the photos Lieutenant Wright had showed him from the surveillance the night before were troubling. Jessup was up to something and whatever it might be, it was going to go down soon.

Before Haller could respond, the background hubbub of the courtroom ceased as the judge took the bench.

“After court,” Haller whispered.

He then turned back to the front of the courtroom and Bosch returned to his seat at the railing. The judge told the deputy to seat the jury and soon everyone was in place.

“I want to apologize,” Breitman said. “This delay was my responsibility. I had a personal matter come up and it took far longer than I expected it would. Mr. Haller, please call your next witness.”

Haller stood and called for Doral Kloster. Bosch stood and headed for the witness stand while the judge once again explained to the jury that the witness called by the prosecution was unavailable and that prior sworn testimony would be read by Bosch and Haller. Though all of this had been worked out in a pretrial hearing and over the objection of the defense, Royce stood once again and objected.

“Mr. Royce, we’ve already argued this issue,” the judge responded.

“I would ask that the court reconsider its ruling as this form of testimony entirely undercuts Mr. Jessup’s Constitutional right to confront his accusers. Detective Kloster was not asked the questions I would want to ask him based on the defense’s current view of the case.”

“Again, Mr. Royce, this issue has been settled and I do not wish to rehash it in front of the jury.”

“But, Your Honor, I am being inhibited from presenting a full defense.”

“Mr. Royce, I have been very generous in allowing you to posture in front of the jury. My patience is now growing thin. You may sit down.”

Royce stared the judge down. Bosch knew what he was doing. Playing to the jury. He wanted them to see him and Jessup as the underdogs. He wanted them to understand that it was not just the prosecution against Jessup but the judge as well. When he had drawn out the stare as long as he dared, he spoke again.

“Judge, I cannot sit down when my client’s freedom is at stake. This is an egregious-”

Breitman angrily slammed her hand down, making a sound as loud as a shot.

“We’re not going to do this in front of the jury, Mr. Royce. Will the jurors please return to the assembly room.”

Wide-eyed and alert to the tension that had engulfed the courtroom, the jurors filed out, to a person glancing back over their shoulders to check the action behind them. The whole time, Royce held his glare on the judge. And Bosch knew it was mostly an act. This was exactly what Royce wanted, for the jury to see him being persecuted and prevented from bringing his case forward. It didn’t matter that they would be sequestered in the jury room. They all knew that Royce was about to get slapped down hard by the judge.

Once the door to the jury assembly room was closed, the judge turned back to Royce. In the thirty seconds it had taken the jury to leave the courtroom, she had obviously calmed down.

“Mr. Royce, at the end of the trial we will be holding a contempt hearing during which your actions today will be examined and penalized. Until then, if I ever order you to sit down and you refuse that order, I will have the courtroom deputy forcibly place you in your seat. And it will not matter to me if the jury is present or not. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor. And I would like to apologize for allowing the emotions of the moment to get the best of me.”

“Very well, Mr. Royce. You will now sit down and we’ll bring the jury back in.”

They held each other’s eyes for a long moment until Royce finally and slowly sat down. The judge then told the courtroom deputy to retrieve the jury.

Bosch glanced at the jurors as they returned. They all had their eyes on Royce, and Harry could see the defense attorney’s gambit had worked. He saw sympathy in their eyes, as if they all knew that at any moment they might cross the judge and be similarly rebuked. They didn’t know what happened while they were behind the closed door, but Royce was like the kid who had been sent to the principal’s office and had returned to tell everyone about it at recess.

The judge addressed the jury before continuing the trial.

“I want the members of the jury to understand that in a trial of this nature emotions sometimes run high. Mr. Royce and I have discussed the issue and it is resolved. You are to pay it no mind. So, let’s proceed with the reading of prior sworn testimony. Mr. Haller?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Haller stood and went to the lectern with his printout of Doral Kloster’s testimony.

“Detective Bosch, you are still under oath. Do you have the transcript of sworn testimony provided by Detective Doral Kloster on October eighth, nineteen eighty-six?”

“Yes, I do.”

Bosch placed the transcript on the stand and took a pair of reading glasses out of his jacket’s inside pocket.

“Okay, then once again I will read the questions that were posed to Detective Kloster under oath by Deputy District Attorney Gary Lintz, and you will read the responses from the witness.”

After a series of questions used to elicit basic information about Kloster, the testimony moved quickly into the investigation of the murder of Melissa Landy.

“ ‘Now, Detective, you are assigned to the detective squad at Wilshire Division, correct?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, I am on the Homicide and Major Crimes table.’ ”

“ ‘And this case did not start out as a homicide.’ ”

“ ‘No, it did not. My partner and I were called in from home after patrol units were dispatched to the Landy house and a preliminary investigation determined that it appeared to be a stranger abduction. That made it a major crime and we were called out.’ ”

“ ‘What happened when you got to the Landy house?’ ”

“ ‘We initially separated the individuals there-the mother, father and Sarah, the sister-and conducted interviews. We then brought the family together and conducted a joint interview. It often works best that way and it did this time. In the joint interview we found our investigative direction.’ ”

“ ‘Tell us about that. How did you find this direction?’ ”

“ ‘In the individual interview, Sarah revealed that the girls had been playing a hide-and-seek game and that she was hiding behind some bushes at the front corner of her house. These bushes blocked her view of the street. She said she heard a trash truck and saw a trashman cross the yard and grab her sister. These events occurred on a Sunday, so we knew there was no city trash pickup. But when I had Sarah recount this story in front of her parents, her father quickly said that on Sunday mornings several tow trucks patrol the neighborhood and that the drivers wear overalls like the city sanitation workers do. And that became our first lead.’ ”

“ ‘And how did you follow that lead?’ ”

“ ‘We were able to obtain a list of city-licensed tow truck companies that operated in the Wilshire District. By this time I had called in more detectives and we split the list up. There were only three companies that were operating on that day. Each pair of detectives took one. My partner and I went to a tow yard on La Brea Boulevard that was operated by a business called Aardvark Towing.’ ”

“ ‘And what happened when you got there?’ ”

“ ‘We found that they were about to shut down for the day because they essentially worked no-parking zones around churches. By noon they were done. There were three drivers and they were securing things and about to head out when we got there. They all voluntarily agreed to identify themselves and answer our questions. While my partner asked preliminary questions I went back to our car and called their names into central dispatch so they could check them for criminal records.’ ”

“ ‘Who were these men, Detective Kloster?’ ”

“ ‘Their names were William Clinton, Jason Jessup and Derek Wilbern.’ ”

“ ‘And what was the result of your records search?’ ”

“ ‘Only Wilbern had an arrest record. It was an attempted rape with no conviction. The case, as I recall, was four years old.’ ”

“ ‘Did this make him a suspect in the Melissa Landy abduction?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, it did. He generally fit the description we had gotten from Sarah. He drove a large truck and wore overalls. And he had an arrest record involving a sex crime. That made him a strong suspect in my mind.’ ”

“ ‘What did you do next?’ ”

“ ‘I returned to my partner and he was still interviewing the men in a group setting. I knew that time was of the essence. This little girl was still missing. She was still out there somewhere and usually in a case like this, the longer the individual is missing, the less chance you have of a good ending.’ ”

“ ‘So you made some decisions, didn’t you?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, I decided that Sarah Landy ought to see Derek Wilbern to see if she could identify him as the abductor.’ ”

“ ‘So did you set up a lineup for her to view?’ ”

“ ‘No, I didn’t.’ ”

“ ‘No?’ ”

“ ‘No. I didn’t feel there was time. I had to keep things moving. We had to try to find that girl. So what I did was ask if the three men would agree to go to a separate location where we could continue the interview. They each said yes.’ ”

“ ‘No hesitation?’ ”

“ ‘No, none. They agreed.’ ”

“ ‘By the way, what happened when the other detectives visited the other towing companies that worked in the Wilshire District?’ ”

“ ‘They did not find or interview anyone who rose to the level of suspect.’ ”

“ ‘You mean no one with a criminal record?’ ”

“ ‘No criminal records and no flags came up during interviews.’ ”

“ ‘So you were concentrating on Derek Wilbern?’ ”

“ ‘That’s right.’ ”

“ ‘So when Wilbern and the other two men agreed to be interviewed at another location, what did you do?’ ”

“ ‘We called for a couple of patrol cruisers and we put Jessup and Clinton in the back of one car and Wilbern in the back of the other. We then closed and locked the Aardvark tow yard and drove ahead in our car.’ ”

“ ‘So you got back to the Landy house first?’ ”

“ ‘By design. We had told the patrol officers to take a circuitous route to the Landy house on Windsor so we could get there first. When we arrived back at the house I took Sarah upstairs to her bedroom, which was located at the front and was overlooking the front yard and street. I closed the blinds and had her look through just a crack so she would not be visibly exposed to the tow truck drivers.’ ”

“ ‘What happened next?’ ”

“ ‘My partner had stayed out front. When the patrol cruisers arrived, I had him take the three men out of the cars and have them stand together on the sidewalk. I asked Sarah if she recognized any of them.’ ”

“ ‘Did she?’ ”

“ ‘Not at first. But one of the men-Jessup-was wearing a baseball hat and he was looking down, using the brim to guard his face.’ ”

Bosch flipped over two pages of the testimony at this point. The pages had been X-ed out. They contained several questions about Jessup’s demeanor and attempt to use his hat to hide his face. These questions were objected to by Jessup’s then-defense counsel, sustained by the trial judge, then resculpted and reasked, and objected to again. In the pretrial hearing, Breitman had agreed with Royce’s contention that the current jury should not even hear them. It was one of the only points Royce had won.

Haller picked up the reading at the point the skirmish had ended.

“ ‘Okay, Detective, why don’t you tell the jury what happened next?’ ”

“ ‘Sarah asked me if I could ask the man with the hat to remove it. I radioed my partner and he told Jessup to take off the hat. Almost immediately, Sarah said it was him.’ ”

“ ‘The man who abducted her sister?’ ”

“ ‘Yes.’ ”

“ ‘Wait a minute. You said Derek Wilbern was your suspect.’ ”

“ ‘Yes, based on his having a record of a prior arrest for a sex crime, I thought he was the most likely suspect.’ ”

“ ‘Was Sarah sure of her identification?’ ”

“ ‘I asked her several times to confirm the identification. She did.’ ”

“ ‘What did you do next?’ ”

“ ‘I left Sarah in her room and went back downstairs. When I got outside I placed Jason Jessup under arrest, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a patrol car. I told other officers to put Wilbern and Clinton in another car and take them down to Wilshire Division for questioning.’ ”

“ ‘Did you question Jason Jessup at this point?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, I did. Again, time was of the essence. I didn’t feel that I had the time to take him to Wilshire Division and set up a formal interview. Instead, I got in the car with him, read him the Miranda warning and asked if he would talk to me. He said yes.’ ”

“ ‘Did you record this?’ ”

“ ‘No, I did not. Frankly, I forgot. Things were moving so quickly and all I could think about was finding that little girl. I had a recorder in my pocket but I forgot to record this conversation.’ ”

“ ‘Okay, so you questioned Jessup anyway?’ ”

“ ‘I asked questions but he gave very few answers. He denied any involvement in the abduction. He acknowledged that he had been on tow patrol in the neighborhood that morning and could have driven by the Landy house but that he did not remember specifically driving on Windsor. I asked him if he remembered seeing the Hollywood sign, because if you are on Windsor you have a straight view of it up the street and on top of the hill. He said he didn’t remember seeing the Hollywood sign.’ ”

“ ‘How long did this questioning go on?’ ”

“ ‘Not long. Maybe five minutes. We were interrupted.’ ”

“ ‘By what, Detective?’ ”

“ ‘My partner knocked on the car’s window and I could tell by his face that whatever he had was important. I got out of the car and that’s when he told me. They had found her. A girl’s body had been found in a Dumpster down on Wilshire.’ ”

“ ‘That changed everything?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, everything. I had Jessup transported downtown and booked while I proceeded to the location of the body.’ ”

“ ‘What did you discover when you got there?’ ”

“ ‘There was a body of a girl approximately twelve or thirteen years old discarded in the Dumpster. She was unidentified at that time but she appeared to be Melissa Landy. I had her photograph. I was pretty sure it was her.’ ”

“ ‘And you moved the focus of your investigation to this location?’ ”

“ ‘Absolutely. My partner and I started conducting interviews while the crime scene people and coroner’s people dealt with the body. We soon learned that the parking lot adjacent to the rear yard of the theater had previously been used as a temporary auto storage point by a towing company. We learned that company was Aardvark Towing.’ ”

“ ‘What did that mean to you?’ ”

“ ‘To me it meant there was now a second connection between the murder of this girl and Aardvark. We had the lone witness, Sarah Landy, identifying one of the Aardvark drivers as the abductor, and now we had the victim found in a Dumpster next to a parking lot used by Aardvark drivers. To me the case was coming together.’ ”

“ ‘What was your next step?’ ”

“ ‘At that point my partner and I split up. He stayed with the crime scene and I went back to Wilshire Division to work on search warrants.’ ”

“ ‘Search warrants for what?’ ”

“ ‘One for the entire premises at Aardvark Towing. One for the tow truck Jessup was driving that day. And two more for Jessup’s home and personal car.’ ”

“ ‘And did you receive these search warrants?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, I did. Judge Richard Pittman was on call and he happened to be playing golf at Wilshire Country Club. I brought him the warrants and he signed them on the ninth hole. We then began the searches, starting at Aardvark.’ ”

“ ‘Were you present at this search?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, I was. My partner and I were in charge of it.’ ”

“ ‘And at some point did you become aware of any particular evidence being found that you deemed important to the case?’ ”

“ ‘Yes. At one point the forensics team leader, a man named Art Donovan, informed me that they had recovered three hairs that were brown in color and over a foot in length each from the tow truck that Jason Jessup was driving that day.’ ”

“ ‘Did Donovan tell you specifically where in the truck these hair specimens were found?’ ”

“ ‘Yes, he said they were caught in the crack between the lower and upper parts of the truck’s bench seat.’ ”

Bosch closed the transcript there. Kloster’s testimony continued but they had reached the point where Haller had said he would stop because he would have all he needed on the record.

The judge then asked Royce if he wished to have any of the defense’s cross-examination read into the record. Royce stood to respond, holding two paper-clipped documents in his hand.

“For the record, I am reluctant to participate in a procedure I object to but since the court is calling the game, I shall play along. I have two brief read-backs of Detective Kloster’s cross-examination. May I give a highlighted printout to Detective Bosch? I think it will make this much easier.”

“Very well,” the judge said.

The courtroom deputy took one of the documents from Royce and delivered it to Bosch, who quickly scanned it. It was only two pages of testimony transcriptions. Two exchanges were highlighted in yellow. As Bosch read them over, the judge explained to the jury that Royce would read questions posed by Jessup’s previous defense attorney, Charles Barnard, while Bosch would continue to read the responses of Detective Doral Kloster.

“You may proceed, Mr. Royce.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Now reading from the transcript, ‘Detective, how long was it from when you closed and locked Aardvark Towing and took the three drivers over to Windsor, and returned with the search warrant?’ ”

“ ‘May I refer to the case chronology?’ ”

“ ‘You may.’ ”

“ ‘It was about two hours and thirty-five minutes.’ ”

“ ‘And when you left Aardvark Towing, how did you secure those premises?’ ”

“ ‘We closed the garages, and one of the drivers-I believe, Mr. Clinton-had a key to the door. I borrowed it to lock the door.’ ”

“ ‘Did you return the key to him after?’ ”

“ ‘No, I asked if I could keep it for the time being and he said that was okay.’ ”

“ ‘So when you went back with the signed search warrant, you had the key and you simply unlocked the door to enter.’ ”

“ ‘That is correct.’ ”

Royce flipped the page on his copy and told Bosch to do likewise.

“Okay, now reading from another point in the cross-examination. ‘Detective Kloster, what did you conclude when you were told about the hair specimens found in the tow truck Mr. Jessup had been driving that day?’ ”

“ ‘Nothing. The specimens had not been identified yet.’ ”

“ ‘At what later point were they identified?’ ”

“ ‘Two days later I got a call from SID. A hair-and-fiber tech told me that the hairs had been examined and that they closely matched samples taken from the victim. She said that she could not exclude the victim as a source.’ ”

“ ‘So then what did that tell you?’ ”

“ ‘That it was likely that Melissa Landy had been in that tow truck.’ ”

“ ‘What other evidence in that truck linked the victim to it or Mr. Jessup to the victim?’ ”

“ ‘There was no other evidence.’ ”

“ ‘No blood or other bodily fluids?’ ”

“ ‘No.’ ”

“ ‘No fibers from the victim’s dress?’ ”

“ ‘No.’ ”

“ ‘Nothing else?’ ”

“ ‘Nothing.’ ”

“ ‘With the lack of other corroborating evidence in the truck, did you ever consider that the hair evidence was planted in the truck?’ ”

“ ‘Well, I considered it in the way I considered all aspects of the case. But I dismissed it because the witness to the abduction had identified Jessup, and that was the truck he was driving. I didn’t think the evidence was planted. I mean, by who? No one was trying to set him up. He was identified by the victim’s sister.’ ”

That ended the read-back. Bosch glanced over at the jury box and saw that it appeared that everyone had remained attentive during what was most likely the most boring stage of the trial.

“Anything further, Mr. Royce?” the judge asked.

“Nothing further, Judge,” Royce responded.

“Very well,” Breitman said. “I think this brings us to our afternoon break. I will see everyone back in place-and I will admonish myself to be on time-in fifteen minutes.”

The courtroom started to clear and Bosch stepped down from the witness stand. He went directly to Haller, who was huddled with McPherson. Bosch butted into their whispered conversation.

“Atwater, right?”

Haller looked up at him.

“Yes, right. Have her ready in fifteen minutes.”

“And you have time to talk after court?”

“I’ll make time. I had an interesting conversation at lunch, as well. I need to tell you.”

Bosch left them and headed out to the hall. He knew the line at the coffee urn in the little concession stand near the elevators would be long and full of jurors from the case. He decided he would hit the stairwell and find coffee on another floor. But first he ducked into the restroom.

As he entered he saw Jessup at one of the sinks. He was leaning over and washing his hands. His eyes were below the mirror line and he didn’t realize Bosch was behind him.

Bosch stood still and waited for the moment, thinking about what he would say when he and Jessup locked eyes.

But just as Jessup raised his head and saw Bosch in the mirror, the door to a stall to the left opened and juror number ten stepped out. It was an awkward moment as all three men said nothing.

Finally, Jessup grabbed a paper towel out of the dispenser, dried his hands and tossed it into the wastebasket. He headed to the door while the juror took his place at the sink. Bosch moved silently to a urinal but looked back at Jessup as he was pushing through the door.

Bosch shot him in the back with his finger. Jessup never saw it coming.

Thirty-one

Tuesday, April 6, 3:05 P.M .

During the break I checked on my next witness and made sure she was good to go. I had a few spare minutes, so I tracked Bosch down in the line at the coffee concession one floor down. Juror number six was two spots in front of him. I took Bosch by the elbow and led him away.

“You can get your coffee later. There’s no time to drink it anyway. I wanted you to know that I had lunch with your girlfriend from the bureau.”

“What? Who?”

“Agent Walling.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Why did she have lunch with you?”

I led him to the stairwell and we headed back upstairs as we talked.

“Well, I think she wanted to have lunch with you but you split out of here too fast so she settled for me. She wanted to give us a warning. She said she’s been watching and reading the reports on the trial and she thinks if Jessup is going to blow, it’s going to be soon. She said he reacts to pressure and he’s probably never been under more than he is right now.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about before.”

He looked around to make sure that no one was in earshot.

“The SIS says Jessup’s nighttime activities have increased since the start of the trial. He’s going out every night now.”

“Has he gone down your street?”

“No, he hasn’t been back there or to any of the other spots off Mulholland in a week. But over the last two nights he’s done things that are new.”

“Like what, Harry?”

“Like on Sunday they followed him down the beach from Venice and he went into the old storage area under the Santa Monica Pier.”

“What storage area? What’s this mean?”

“It’s an old city storage facility but it got flooded by high tides so many times it’s locked up and abandoned. Jessup dug underneath one of the old wood sidings and crawled in.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? They couldn’t go in or they would risk exposing the surveillance. But that’s not the real news. The real news is, last night he met with a couple of guys at the Townhouse in Venice and then went out to a car in one of the beach lots. One of the guys took something wrapped in a towel out of the trunk and gave it to him.”

“A gun?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Whatever it was, they never saw, but through the car’s plates they IDed one of the two guys. Marshall Daniels. He was in San Quentin in the nineties-same time as Jessup.”

I was now catching some of the tension and urgency that was coming off Bosch.

“They could’ve known each other. What was Daniels up there for?”

“Drugs and weapons.”

I checked my watch. I needed to be back in court.

“Then we have to assume Jessup has a weapon. We could violate his OR right now for associating with a convicted felon. Do they have pictures of Jessup and Daniels together?”

“They have photos but I am not sure we want to do that.”

“If he’s got a gun… Do you trust the SIS to stop him before he makes a move or does some damage?”

“I do, but it would help if we knew what the move was.”

We stepped out into the hallway and saw no sign of any jurors or anyone else from the trial. Everybody was back in court but me.

“We’ll talk about this later. I have to get back into court or the judge will jump on my ass next. I’m not like Royce. I can’t afford a contempt hearing just to make a point with the jury. Go get Atwater and bring her in.”

I hurried back to Department 112 and rudely pushed around a couple of the courthouse gadflies who were moving slowly through the door. Judge Breitman had not waited for me. I saw everyone but me in place and the jury was being seated. I moved up the aisle and through the gate and slipped into the seat next to Maggie.

“That was close,” she whispered. “I think the judge was hoping to even things up by holding you in contempt.”

“Yeah, well, she may still.”

The judge turned away from the jurors and noticed me at the prosecution table.

“Well, thank you for joining us this afternoon, Mr. Haller. Did you have a nice excursion?”

I stood.

“My apologies, Your Honor. I had a personal matter come up and it took far longer than I expected it would.”

She opened her mouth to deliver a rebuke but then paused as she realized I had thrown her words from the morning’s delay-her delay-right back at her.

“Just call your next witness, Counselor,” she said curtly.

I called Lisa Atwater to the stand and glanced to the back of the courtroom to see Bosch leading the DNA lab technician down the aisle to the gate. I checked the clock up on the rear wall. My goal was to use up the rest of the day with Atwater’s testimony, bringing her to the nuts and bolts just before we recessed for the day. That might give Royce a whole night to prepare his cross-examination, but I would happily trade that for what I would get out of the deal-every juror going home with knowledge of the unimpeachable evidence that linked Jason Jessup to the murder of Melissa Landy.

As I had asked her to, Atwater had kept her lab coat on when she walked over from the LAPD lab. The light blue jacket gave her a look of competence and professionalism that the rest of her didn’t convey. Atwater was very young-only thirty-one-and had blond hair with a pink stripe down one side, modeling her look after a supercool lab tech on one of the TV crime shows. After meeting her for the first time, I tried to get her to think about losing the pink, but she told me she wouldn’t give up her individuality. The jurors, she said, would have to accept her for who and what she was.

At least the lab coat wasn’t pink.

Atwater identified herself and was sworn in. After she took the witness seat I started asking questions about her educational pedigree and work experience. I spent at least ten more minutes on this than I normally would have, but I kept seeing that ribbon of pink hair and thought I had to do all I could to turn it into a badge of professionalism and accomplishment.

Finally, I got to the crux of her testimony. With me carefully asking the questions, she testified that she had conducted DNA typing and comparison on two completely different evidence samples from the Landy case. I went with the more problematic analysis first.

“Ms. Atwater, can you describe the first DNA assignment you received on the Landy case?”

“Yes, on February fourth I was given a swatch of fabric that had been cut from the dress that the victim had been wearing at the time of her murder.”

“Where did you receive this from?”

“It came from the LAPD’s Property Division, where it had been kept in controlled evidence storage.”

Her answers were carefully rehearsed. She could give no indication that there had been a previous trial in the case or that Jessup had been in prison for the past twenty-four years. To do so would create prejudice against Jessup and trigger a mistrial.

“Why were you sent this swatch of fabric?”

“There was a stain on the fabric that twenty-four years ago had been identified by the LAPD forensics unit as semen. My assignment was to extract DNA and identify it if possible.”

“When you examined this swatch, was there any degradation of the genetic material on it?”

“No, sir. It had been properly preserved.”

“Okay, so you got this swatch of material from Melissa Landy’s dress and you extracted DNA from it. Do I have that right so far?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you do next?”

“I turned the DNA profile into a code and entered it into the CODIS database.”

“What is CODIS?”

“It’s the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. Think of it as a national clearinghouse of DNA records. All DNA signatures gathered by law enforcement end up here and are available for comparison.”

“So you entered the DNA signature obtained from semen on the dress Melissa Landy wore on the day she was murdered, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Did you get a hit?”

“I did. The profile belonged to her stepfather, Kensington Landy.”

A courtroom is a big space. There is always a low-level current of sound and energy. You can feel it even if you can’t really hear it. People whisper in the gallery, the clerk and deputy handle phone calls, the court reporter touches the keys on her steno machine. But the sound and air went completely out of Department 112 after Lisa Atwater said what she said. I let it ride for a few moments. I knew this would be the lowest point of the case. With that one answer I had, in fact, revealed Jason Jessup’s case. But from this point on, it would all be my case. And Melissa Landy’s case. I wouldn’t forget about her.

“Why was Kensington Landy’s DNA in the CODIS database?” I asked.

“Because California has a law that requires all felony arrest suspects to submit a DNA sample. In two thousand four Mr. Landy was arrested for a hit-and-run accident causing injury. Though he eventually pleaded to lesser charges, it was originally charged as a felony, thus triggering the DNA law upon his booking. His DNA was entered into the system.”

“Okay. Now getting back to the victim’s dress and the semen that was on it. How did you determine that the semen was deposited on the day that Melissa Landy was murdered?”

Atwater seemed confused by the question at first. It was a skilled act.

“I didn’t,” she said. “It is impossible to know exactly when that deposit was made.”

“You mean it could have been on the dress for a week before her death?”

“Yes. There’s no way of knowing.”

“What about a month?”

“It’s possible because there is-”

“What about a year?”

“Again, it is-”

“Objection!”

Royce stood. About time, I thought.

“Your Honor, how long does this have to go on past the point?”

“Withdrawn, Judge. Mr. Royce is right. We’re well past the point.”

I paused for a moment to underline that Atwater and I would now be moving in a new direction.

“Ms. Atwater, you recently handled a second DNA analysis in regard to the Melissa Landy case, correct?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Can you describe what that entailed?”

Before answering she secured the pink band of hair behind her ear.

“Yes, it was a DNA extraction and comparison of hair specimens. Hair from the victim, Melissa Landy, which was contained in a kit taken at the time of her autopsy and hair recovered from a tow truck operated by the defendant, Jason Jessup.”

“How many hair specimens are we talking about?”

“Ultimately, one of each. Our objective was to extract nuclear DNA, which is available only in the root of a hair sample. Of the specimens we had, there was only one suitable extraction from the hairs recovered from the tow truck. So we compared DNA from the root of that hair to DNA from a hair sample taken from the autopsy kit.”

I walked her through the process, trying to keep the explanations as simple as possible. Just enough to get by, like on TV. I kept one eye on my witness and one on the jury box, making sure everybody was staying plugged in and happy.

Finally, we came out the other end of the techno-genetic tunnel and arrived at Lisa Atwater’s conclusions. She put several color-coded charts and graphs up on the screens and thoroughly explained them. But the bottom line was always the same thing; to feel it, jurors had to hear it. The most important thing a witness brings into a courtroom is her word. After all the charts were displayed, it came down to Atwater’s words.

I turned and looked back at the clock. I was right on schedule. In less than twenty minutes the judge would recess for the evening. I turned back and moved in for the kill.

“Ms. Atwater, do you have any hesitation or doubt at all about the genetic match you have just testified about?”

“No, none whatsoever.”

“Do you believe beyond a doubt that the hair from Melissa Landy is a unique match to the hair specimen obtained from the tow truck the defendant was operating on February sixteenth, nineteen eighty-six?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Is there a quantifiable way of illustrating this match?”

“Yes, as I illustrated earlier, we matched nine out of the thirteen genetic markers in the CODIS protocol. The combination of these nine particular genetic markers occurs in one in one-point-six trillion individuals.”

“Are you saying it is a one-in-one-point-six-trillion chance that the hair found in the tow truck operated by the defendant belonged to someone other than Melissa Landy?”

“You could say it that way, yes.”

“Ms. Atwater, do you happen to know the current population of the world?”

“It’s approaching seven billion.”

“Thank you, Ms. Atwater. I have no further questions at this time.”

I moved to my seat and sat down. Immediately I started stacking files and documents, getting it all ready for the briefcase and the ride home. This day was in the books and I had a long night ahead of me preparing for the next one. The judge didn’t seem to begrudge me finishing ten minutes early. She was shutting down herself and sending the jury home.

“We will continue with the cross-examination of this witness tomorrow. I would like to thank all of you for paying such close attention to today’s testimony. We will be adjourned until nine o’clock sharp tomorrow morning and I once again admonish you not to watch any news program or-”

“Your Honor?”

I looked up from the files. Royce was on his feet.

“Yes, Mr. Royce?”

“My apologies, Judge Breitman, for interrupting. But by my watch, it is only four-fifty and I know that you prefer to get as much testimony as possible in each day. I would like to cross-examine this witness now.”

The judge looked at Atwater, who was still on the witness stand, and then back to Royce.

“Mr. Royce, I would rather you begin your cross tomorrow morning rather than start and then interrupt it after only ten minutes. We don’t go past five o’clock with the jury. That is a rule I will not break.”

“I understand, Judge. But I am not planning to interrupt it. I will be finished with this witness by five o’clock and then she will not be required to return tomorrow.”

The judge stared at Royce for a long moment, a disbelieving look on her face.

“Mr. Royce, Ms. Atwater is one of the prosecution’s key witnesses. Are you telling me you only need five minutes for cross-examination?”

“Well, of course it depends on the length of her answers, but I have only a few questions, Your Honor.”

“Very well, then. You may proceed. Ms. Atwater, you remain under oath.”

Royce moved to the lectern and I was as confused as the judge about the defense’s maneuver. I had expected Royce to take most of the next morning on cross. This had to be a trick. He had a DNA expert on his own witness list but I would never give up a shot at the prosecution’s witness.

“Ms. Atwater,” Royce said, “did all of the testing and typing and extracting you conducted on the hair specimen from the tow truck tell you how the specimen got inside that truck?”

To buy time Atwater asked Royce to repeat the question. But even upon hearing it a second time, she did not answer until the judge intervened.

“Ms. Atwater, can you answer the question?” Breitman asked.

“Uh, yes, I’m sorry. My answer is no, the lab work I conducted had nothing to do with determining how the hair specimen found its way into the tow truck. That was not my responsibility.”

“Thank you,” Royce said. “So to make it crystal clear, you cannot tell the jury how that hair-which you have capably identified as belonging to the victim-got inside the truck or who put it there, isn’t that right?”

I stood.

“Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Sustained. Would you like to rephrase, Mr. Royce?”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Ms. Atwater, you have no idea-other than what you were perhaps told-how the hair you tested found its way into the tow truck, correct?”

“That would be correct, yes.”

“So you can identify the hair as Melissa Landy’s but you cannot testify with the same sureness as to how it ended up in the tow truck, correct?”

I stood up again.

“Objection,” I said. “Asked and answered.”

“I think I will let the witness answer,” Breitman said. “Ms. Atwater?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Atwater said. “I cannot testify about anything regarding how the hair happened to end up in the truck.”

“Then I have no further questions. Thank you.”

I turned back and looked at the clock. I had two minutes. If I wanted to get the jury back on track I had to think of something quick.

“Any redirect, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

“One moment, Your Honor.”

I turned and leaned toward Maggie to whisper.

“What do I do?”

“Nothing,” she whispered back. “Let it go or you might make it worse. You made your points. He made his. Yours are more important-you put Melissa inside his truck. Leave it there.”

Something told me not to leave it as is but my mind was a blank. I couldn’t think of a question derived from Royce’s cross that would get the jury off his point and back onto mine.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge said impatiently.

I gave it up.

“No further questions at this time, Your Honor.”

“Very well, then, we will adjourn for the day. Court will reconvene at nine A.M. tomorrow and I admonish the jurors not to read newspaper accounts about this trial or view television reports or talk to family or friends about the case. I hope everyone has a good night.”

With that the jury stood and began to file out of the box. I casually glanced over at the defense table and saw Royce being congratulated by Jessup. They were all smiles. I felt a hollow in my stomach the size of a baseball. It was as though I had played it to near perfection all day long-for almost six hours of testimony-and then in the last five minutes managed to let the last out in the ninth go right between my legs.

I sat still and waited until Royce and Jessup and everybody else had left the courtroom.

“You coming?” Maggie said from behind me.

“In a minute. How about I meet you back at the office?”

“Let’s walk back together.”

“I’m not good company, Mags.”

“Haller, get over it. You had a great day. We had a great day. He was good for five minutes and the jury knows that.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a little bit.”

She gave up and I heard her leave. After a few minutes I reached over to the top file on the stack in front of me and opened it up halfway. A school photo of Melissa Landy was clipped inside the folder. Smiling at the camera. She looked nothing like my daughter but she made me think of Hayley.

I made a silent vow not to let Royce outsmart me again.

A few moments later, someone turned out the lights.

Thirty-two

Tuesday, April 6, 10:15 P.M .

Bosch stood by the swing set planted in the sand a quarter mile south of the Santa Monica Pier. The black water of the Pacific to his left was alive with the dancing reflection of light and color from the Ferris wheel at the end of the boardwalk. The amusement park had closed fifteen minutes earlier but the light show would go on through the night, an electronic display of ever-changing patterns on the big wheel that was mesmerizing in the cold darkness.

Harry raised his phone and called the SIS dispatcher. He had checked in earlier and set things up.

“It’s Bosch again. How’s our boy?”

“He appears to be tucked in for the night. You must’ve worn him out in court today, Bosch. On the way home from the CCB he went to Ralphs to pick up some groceries and then straight home, where he’s been ever since. First night in five he hasn’t been out and about at this time.”

“Yeah, well, don’t count on it staying that way. They’ve got the back door covered, right?”

“And the windows and the car and the bicycle. We got him, Detective. Don’t worry.”

“Then I won’t. You’ve got my number. Call me if he moves.”

“Will do.”

Bosch put the phone away and headed toward the pier. The wind was strong off the water and a fine mist of sand stung his face and eyes as he approached the huge structure. The pier was like a beached aircraft carrier. It was long and wide. It had a large parking lot and an assortment of restaurants and souvenir shops on top. At its midpoint it had a full amusement park with a roller coaster and the signature Ferris wheel. And at its furthest extension into the sea it was a traditional fishing pier with a bait shop, management office and yet another restaurant. All of it was supported on a thick forest of wood pilings that started landside and carried seven hundred feet out beyond the wave break and to the cold depths.

Landside, the pilings were enclosed with a wooden siding that created a semi-secure storage facility for the city of Santa Monica. Only semi-secure for two reasons: The storage area was vulnerable to extreme high tides, which came on rare occasion during offshore earthquakes. Also, the pier spanned a hundred yards of beach, which entailed anchoring the wood siding in moist sand. The wood was always in the process of rotting and was easily compromised. The result was that the storage facility had become an unofficial homeless shelter that had to be periodically cleared out by the city.

The SIS observers had reported that Jason Jessup had slipped underneath the south wall the night before and had spent thirty-one minutes inside the storage area.

Bosch reached the pier and started walking its length, looking for the spot in the wood siding where Jessup had crawled under. He carried a mini Maglite and quickly found a depression where the sand had been dug out at the wall’s base and partially filled back in. He crouched down, put the light into the hole and determined that it was too small for him to fit through. He put the light down to the side, reached down and started digging like a dog trying to escape the yard.

Soon the hole seemed big enough and he crawled through. He was dressed for the effort. Old black jeans and work boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt beneath a plastic raid jacket he wore inside out to hide the luminescent yellow LAPD across the front and back.

He came up inside to a dark, cavernous space with slashes of light filtering down between the planks of the parking lot above. He stood up and brushed the sand off his clothes, then swept the area with the flashlight. It had been made for close-in work, so its beam did little to illuminate the far reaches of the space.

There was a damp smell and the sound of waves crashing through the pilings only twenty-five yards away echoed loudly in the enclosed space. Bosch pointed the light up and saw fungus caked on the pier’s crossbeams. He moved forward into the gloom and quickly came upon a boat covered by a tarp. He lifted up a loose end and saw that it was an old lifeguard boat. He moved on and came upon stacks of buoys and then stacks of traffic barricades and mobile barriers, all of them stenciled with CITY OF SANTA MONICA.

He next came to three stacks of scaffolding used for paint and repair projects on the pier. They looked long untouched and were slowly sinking in the sand.

Across the rear was a line of enclosed storage rooms, but the wood sidings had cracked and split over time, making storage in them porous at best.

The doors were unlocked and Bosch went down the line, finding each one empty until the second to the last. Here the door was secured with a shiny new padlock. He put the beam of his light into one of the cracks between the planks of the siding and tried to look in. He saw what appeared to be the edge of a blanket but that was all.

Bosch moved back to the door and knelt down in front of the lock. He held the light with his mouth and extracted two lock picks from his wallet. He went to work on the padlock and quickly determined that it had only four tumblers. He got it open in less than five minutes.

He entered the storage corral and found it largely empty. There was a folded blanket on the ground with a pillow on top of it. Nothing else. The SIS surveillance report had said that the night before, Jessup had walked down the beach carrying a blanket. It did not say that he had left it behind under the pier, and there had been nothing in the report about a pillow.

Harry wasn’t even sure he was in the same spot that Jessup had come to. He moved the light over the wall and then up to the underside of the pier, where he held it. He could clearly see the outline of a door. A trapdoor. It was locked from underneath with another new padlock.

Bosch was pretty sure that he was standing beneath the pier’s parking lot. He had occasionally heard the sound of vehicles up above as the pier crowd went home. He guessed that the trapdoor had been used as some sort of loading door for materials to be stored. He knew he could grab one of the scaffolds and climb up to examine the second lock but decided not to bother. He retreated from the corral.

As he was relocking the door with the padlock he felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out, expecting to learn from SIS dispatch that Jessup was on the move. But the caller ID told him the call was from his daughter. He opened the phone.

“Hey, Maddie.”

“Dad? Are you there?”

Her voice was low and the sound of crashing waves was loud. Bosch yelled.

“I’m here. What’s wrong?”

“Well, when are you coming home?”

“Soon, baby. I’ve got a little bit more work to do.”

She dropped her voice even lower and Bosch had to clamp a hand over his other ear to hear her. In the background he could hear the freeway on her end. He knew she was on the rear deck.

“Dad, she’s making me do homework that isn’t even due until next week.”

Bosch had once again left her with Sue Bambrough, the assistant principal.

“So next week you’ll be thanking her when everybody else is doing it and you’ll be all done.”

“Dad, I’ve been doing homework all night!”

“You want me to tell her to let you take a break?”

His daughter didn’t respond and Bosch understood. She had called because she wanted him to know the misery she was suffering. But she didn’t want him to do anything about it.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “When I get back I will remind Mrs. Bambrough that you are not in school when you are at home and you don’t need to be working the whole time. Okay?”

“I guess. Why can’t I just stay at Rory’s? This isn’t fair.”

“Maybe next time. I need to get back to work, Mads. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I want you in bed by the time I get home.”

“Whatever.”

“Good night, Madeline. Make sure all the doors are locked, including on the deck, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

The disapproval in her voice was hard to miss. She disconnected the call ahead of Bosch. He closed his phone and just as he slid it into his pocket he heard a noise, like a banging of metal parts, coming from the direction of the hole he had slid through into the storage area. He immediately killed his flashlight and moved toward the tarp that covered the boat.

Crouching behind the boat, he saw a human figure stand up by the wall and start moving in the darkness without a flashlight. The figure moved without hesitation toward the storage corral with the new lock on it.

There were streetlights over the parking lot above. They sent slivers of illumination down through the cracks formed by retreating planks in the boardwalk. As the figure moved through these, Bosch saw that it was Jessup.

Harry dropped lower and instinctively reached his hand to his belt just to make sure his gun was there. With his other hand he pulled his phone and hit the mute button. He didn’t want the SIS dispatcher to suddenly remember to call him to alert him that Jessup was moving.

Bosch noticed that Jessup was carrying a bag that appeared to be heavily weighted. He went directly to the locked storage room and soon swung the door open. He obviously had a key to the padlock.

Jessup stepped back and Bosch saw a slash of light cross his face as he turned and scanned the entire storage area, making sure he was alone. He then went inside the room.

For several seconds, there was no sound or movement, then Jessup reappeared in the doorway. He stepped out and closed the door, relocking it. He then stepped back into the light and did a 180-degree scan of the larger storage area. Bosch lowered his body even further. He guessed that Jessup was suspicious because he had found the hole under the wall freshly dug out.

“Who’s there?” he called out.

Bosch didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe.

“Show yourself!”

Bosch snaked his hand under the raid jacket and closed his hand on his gun’s grips. He knew the indications were that Jessup had obtained a weapon. If he made even a feint in Bosch’s direction, Harry was going to pull his own weapon and be ready to fire first.

But it never happened. Jessup started moving quickly back to the entrance hole and soon he disappeared in the darkness. Bosch listened but all he could hear was the crashing of the waves. He waited another thirty seconds and then started moving toward the opening in the wall. He didn’t turn on the light. He wasn’t sure Jessup had actually left.

As he moved around the stack of scaffolding frames, he banged his shin hard on a metal pipe that was extending out from the pile. It sent a sudden burst of pain up his left leg and shifted the balance of metal frames. The top two loudly slid off stack, clattering to the sand. Bosch threw himself to the sand next to the pile and waited.

But Jessup didn’t appear. He was gone.

Bosch slowly got up. He was in pain and he was angry. He pulled his phone and called SIS dispatch.

“You were supposed to call me when Jessup moved!” he whispered angrily.

“I know that,” said the dispatcher. “He hasn’t moved.”

“What? Are you-patch me through to whoever’s in charge out there.”

“I’m sorry, Detective, but that’s not how-”

“Look, shithead, Jessup is not tucked in for the night. I just saw him. And it almost turned bad. Now let me talk to somebody out there or my next call is to Lieutenant Wright at home.”

While he waited Bosch moved to the sidewall so he could get out of the storage area. His leg hurt badly and he was walking with a limp.

In the darkness he couldn’t find the spot where he could slip under the wall. Finally, he put the light on, holding it low to the ground. He found the spot but saw that Jessup had pushed sand into the hole, just as he had the night before.

A voice finally came to him over the phone.

“Bosch? This is Jacquez. You claim you just saw our subject?”

“I don’t claim I saw him. I did see him. Where are your people?”

“We’re sitting on his zero, man. He hasn’t left.”

Zero was a surveillance subject’s home location.

“Bullshit, I just saw him under the Santa Monica pier. Get your people up here. Now.”

“We got his zero down tight, Bosch. There’s no-”

“Listen, Jackass, Jessup is my case. I know him and he almost just crawled up my ass. Now call your men and find out which one went off post because-”

“I’ll get back to you,” Jacquez said curtly and the line went dead.

Bosch turned the phone’s ringer back on and put it in his pocket. Once again he dropped to his knees and quickly dug out the hole, using his hands as a scoop. He then pushed his body through, half expecting Jessup to be waiting for him when he came up on the other side.

But there was no sign of him. Bosch got up, gazed south down the beach in the direction of Venice and saw no one in the light from the Ferris wheel. He then turned and looked up toward the hotels and apartment buildings that ran along the beach. Several people were on the beach walk that fronted the buildings but he didn’t recognize any of the figures as Jessup.

Twenty-five yards up the pier was a set of stairs leading topside and directly to the pier’s parking lot. Bosch headed that way, still limping badly. He was halfway up the stairs when his phone rang. It was Jacquez.

“All right, where is he? We’re on our way.”

“That’s the thing. I lost him. I had to hide and I thought you people were on him. I’m going to the top of the pier now. What the hell happened, Jacquez?”

“We had a guy step out to drop a deuce. Said his stomach was giving him trouble. I don’t think he’ll be in the unit after tonight.”

“Jesus Christ!”

Bosch got to the top of the steps and walked out onto the empty parking lot. There was no sign of Jessup.

“Okay, I’m up on the pier. I don’t see him. He’s in the wind.”

“Okay, Bosch, we’re two minutes out. We’re going to spread. We’ll find him. He didn’t take the car or the bike, so he’s on foot.”

“He could’ve grabbed a cab at any one of the hotels over here. The bottom line is we don’t know where-”

Bosch suddenly realized something.

“I gotta go. Call me as soon as you have him, Jacquez. You got that?”

“Got it.”

Bosch ended the call and then immediately called his home on the speed dial. He checked his watch and expected Sue Bambrough to answer, since it was after eleven.

But his daughter picked up the call.

“Dad?”

“Hey, baby, why are you still up?”

“Because I had to do all that homework. I wanted a little break before I went to sleep.”

“That’s fine. Listen, can you put Mrs. Bambrough on the line?”

“Dad, I’m in my bedroom and I’m in my pajamas.”

“That’s okay. Just go to the door and tell her to pick up the phone in the kitchen. I need to talk to her. And meantime, you have to get dressed. You’re leaving the house.”

“What? Dad, I have-”

“Madeline, listen to me. This is important. I am going to tell Mrs. Bambrough to take you to her house until I can get there. I want you out of the house.”

“Why?”

“You don’t need to know that. You just need to do what I ask. Now, please, get Mrs. Bambrough on the phone.”

She didn’t respond but he heard the door of her room open. Then he heard his daughter say, “It’s for you.”

A few moments later the extension was picked up in the kitchen.

“Hello?”

“Sue, it’s Harry. I need you to do something. I need you to take Maddie to your house. Right now. I will be there in less than an hour to get her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Sue, listen, we’ve been watching a guy tonight who knows where I live. And we lost him. Now, there is no reason to panic or to believe he is heading that way but I want to take all precautions. So I want you to take Maddie and get out of the house. Right now. Go to your place and I will see you there. Can you do this, Sue?”

“We’re leaving right now.”

He liked the strength in her voice and realized it probably came with the territory of being a teacher and assistant principal in the public school system.

“Okay, I’m on my way. Call me back as soon as you get to your place.”

But Bosch wasn’t really on his way. After the call, he put the phone away and went back down the steps to the beach. He returned to the hole he had dug under the storage area wall. He crawled back under and this time used his flashlight to find his way to the locked storage room. He used his picks again on the padlock and the whole time he worked he was distracted by thoughts of Jessup’s escape from the surveillance. Had it just been a coincidence that he had left his apartment at the same time the SIS watcher had left his post, or was he aware of the surveillance and did he break free when he saw the opportunity?

At the moment, there was no way to know.

Finally, he got the lock open, taking longer than he had the first time. He entered the storage room and moved the light to the blanket and pillow on the ground. The bag Jessup had carried was there. It said Ralphs on its side. Bosch dropped to his knees and was about to open it when his phone buzzed. It was Jacquez.

“We got him. He’s on Nielson at Ocean Park. It looks like he’s walking home.”

“Then try not to lose him this time, Jacquez. I gotta go.”

He disconnected before Jacquez could reply. He quickly called his daughter’s cell. She was in the car with Sue Bambrough. Bosch told her they could turn around and go back home. This news was not received with a thankful release of tension. His daughter was left upset and angry over the scare. Bosch couldn’t blame her but he couldn’t stay on the line.

“I’ll be home in less than an hour. We can talk about it then if you’re still awake. I’ll see you soon.”

He disconnected the call and focused on the bag. He opened it without moving it from its spot next to the blanket.

The bag contained a dozen single-serving-size cans of fruit. There were diced peaches in heavy syrup, chopped pineapple and something called fruit medley. Also in the bag was a package of plastic spoons. Bosch stared at the contents for a long moment and then his eyes moved up the wall to the crossbeams and the locked trapdoor above.

“Who are you bringing here, Jessup?” he whispered.

Thirty-three

Wednesday, April 7, 1:05 P.M .

All eyes were on the back of the courtroom. It was time for the main event, and while I had ringside seats, I was still going to be just a spectator like everybody else. That didn’t sit very well with me but it was a choice I could live with and trust. The door opened and Harry Bosch led our main witness into the courtroom. Sarah Ann Gleason told us she didn’t own any dresses and didn’t want to buy one to testify in. She wore black jeans and a purple silk blouse. She looked pretty and she looked confident. We didn’t need a dress.

Bosch stayed on her right side and when opening the gate for her positioned his body between her and Jessup, who sat at the defense table, turned like everybody else toward his main accuser’s entrance.

Bosch let her go the rest of the way by herself. Maggie McFierce was already at the lectern and she smiled warmly at her witness as she went by. This was Maggie’s moment, too, and I read her smile as one of hope for both women.

We’d had a good morning, with testimony from Bill Clinton, the former tow truck driver, and then Bosch taking the case through to lunch. Clinton told his story about the day of the murder and Jessup borrowing his Dodgers cap just before they became part of the impromptu lineup outside the house on Windsor Boulevard. He also testified to the Aardvark drivers’ frequent use of and familiarity with the parking lot behind the El Rey Theatre, and Jessup’s claim to Windsor Boulevard on the morning of the murder. These were good, solid points for the prosecution, and Clinton gave no quarter to Royce on cross.

Then Bosch took the stand for a third time in the trial. Rather than read previous testimony, this time he testified about his own recent investigation of the case and produced the Dodgers cap-with the initials BC under the brim-from property that had been seized from Jessup during his arrest twenty-four years earlier. We were forced to dance around the fact that the hat as well as Jessup’s other belongings had been in the property room at San Quentin for the past twenty-four years. To bring that information out would be to reveal that Jessup had previously been convicted of Melissa Landy’s murder.

And now Sarah Gleason would be the prosecution’s final witness. Through her the case would come together in the emotional crescendo I was counting on. One sister standing for a long-lost sister. I leaned back in my seat to watch my ex-wife-the best prosecutor I had ever encountered-take us home.

Gleason was sworn in and then took her seat on the stand. She was small and required the microphone to be lowered by the courtroom deputy. Maggie cleared her voice and began.

“Good morning, Ms. Gleason. How are you today?”

“I’m doing pretty good.”

“Can you please tell the jury a little bit about yourself?”

“Um, I’m thirty-seven years old. Not married. I live in Port Townsend, Washington, and I’ve been there about seven years now.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a glass artist.”

“And what was your relationship to Melissa Landy?”

“She was my younger sister.”

“How much younger was she than you?”

“Thirteen months.”

Maggie put a photograph of the two sisters up on the overhead screen as a prosecution exhibit. It showed two smiling girls standing in front of a Christmas tree.

“Can you identify this photo?”

“That was me and Melissa at the last Christmas. Right before she was taken.”

“So that would be Christmas nineteen eighty-five?”

“Yes.”

“I notice that she and you are about the same size.”

“Yes, she wasn’t really my little sister anymore. She had caught up to me.”

“Did you share the same clothes?”

“We shared some things but we also had our favorite things that we didn’t share. That could cause a fight.”

She smiled and Maggie nodded that she understood.

“Now, you said she was taken. Were you referring to February sixteenth of the following year, the date of your sister’s abduction and murder?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Okay, Sarah, I know it will be difficult for you but I would like you to tell the jury what you saw and did on that day.”

Gleason nodded as if steeling herself for what was ahead. I checked the jury and saw every eye holding on her. I then turned and glanced at the defense table and locked eyes with Jessup. I did not look away. I held his defiant stare and tried to send back my own message. That two women-one asking the questions, the other answering them-were going to take him down.

Finally, it was Jessup who looked away.

“Well, it was a Sunday,” Gleason said. “We were going to go to church. My whole family. Melissa and I were in our dresses so my mother told us to go out front.”

“Why couldn’t you use the backyard?”

“My stepfather was building a pool and there was a lot of mud in the back and a big hole. My mother was worried we might fall down and get our dresses dirty.”

“So you went out to the front yard.”

“Yes.”

“And where were your parents at this time, Sarah?”

“My mother was still upstairs getting ready and my stepfather was in the TV room. He was watching sports.”

“Where was the TV room in the house?”

“In the back next to the kitchen.”

“Okay, Sarah, I am going to show you a photo called ‘People’s prosecution exhibit eleven.’ Is this the front of the house where you lived on Windsor Boulevard?”

All eyes went to the overhead screen. The yellow-brick house spread across the screen. It was a long shot from the street, showing a deep front yard with ten-foot hedges running down both sides. There was a front porch that ran the width of the house and that was largely hidden behind ornamental vegetation. There was a paved walkway extending from the sidewalk, across the lawn and to the steps of the front porch. I had reviewed our photo exhibits several times in preparation for the trial. But for the first time, I noticed that the walkway had a crack running down the center of its entire length from sidewalk to front steps. It somehow seemed appropriate, considering what had happened at the home.

“Yes, that was our house.”

“Tell us what happened that day in the front yard, Sarah.”

“Well, we decided to play hide-and-seek while we waited for our parents. I was It first and I found Melissa hiding behind that bush on the right side of the porch.”

She pointed to the exhibit photo that was still on the screen. I realized we had forgotten to give Gleason the laser pointer we had prepared her testimony with. I quickly opened Maggie’s briefcase and found it. I stood and handed it to her. With the judge’s permission, she gave it to the witness.

“Okay, Sarah, could you use the laser to show us?” Maggie asked.

Gleason moved the red laser dot in a circle around a thick bush at the north corner of the front porch.

“So she hid there and you found her?”

“Yes, and then when it was her turn to be It, I decided to hide in the same spot because I didn’t think she would look there at first. When she was finished counting she came down the steps and stood in the middle of the yard.”

“You could see her from your hiding place?”

“Yes, through the bush I could see her. She was sort of turning in a half circle, looking for me.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, first I heard a truck go by and-”

“Let me just stop you right there, Sarah. You say you heard a truck. You didn’t see it?”

“No, not from where I was hiding.”

“How do you know that it was a truck?”

“It was very loud and heavy. I could feel it in the ground, like a little earthquake.”

“Okay, what happened after you heard the truck?”

“Suddenly I saw a man in the yard… and he went right up to my sister and grabbed her by her wrist.”

Gleason cast her eyes down and held her hands together on the dais in front of her seat.

“Sarah, did you know this man?”

“No, I did not.”

“Had you ever seen him before?”

“No, I had not.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Yes, I heard him say, ‘You have to come with me.’ And my sister said… she said, ‘Are you sure?’ And that was it. I think he said something else but I didn’t hear it. He led her away. To the street.”

“And you stayed in hiding?”

“Yes, I couldn’t… for some reason I couldn’t move. I couldn’t call for help, I couldn’t do anything. I was very scared.”

It was one of those solemn moments in the courtroom when there was absolute silence except for the voices of the prosecutor and the witness.

“Did you see or hear anything else, Sarah?”

“I heard a door close and then I heard the truck drive away.”

I saw the tears on Sarah Gleason’s cheeks. I thought the courtroom deputy had noticed as well because he took a box of tissues from a drawer in his desk and crossed the courtroom with them. But instead of taking them to Sarah he handed the box to juror number two, who had tears on her cheeks as well. This was okay with me. I wanted the tears to stay on Sarah’s face.

“Sarah, how long was it before you came out from behind the bush where you were hiding and told your parents that your sister had been taken?”

“I think it was less than a minute but it was too late. She was gone.”

The silence that followed that statement was the kind of void that lives can disappear into. Forever.

Maggie spent the next half hour walking Gleason through her memory of what came after. Her stepfather’s desperate 9-1-1 call to the police, the interview she gave to the detectives, and then the lineup she viewed from her bedroom window and her identifying Jason Jessup as the man she saw lead her sister away.

Maggie had to be very careful here. We had used sworn testimony of witnesses from the first trial. The record of that entire trial was available to Royce as well, and I knew without a doubt that he had his assistant counsel, who was sitting on the other side of Jessup, comparing everything Sarah Gleason was saying now with the testimony she gave at the first trial. If she changed one nuance of her story, Royce would be all over her on it during his cross-examination, using the discrepancy to try to cast her as a liar.

To me the testimony came off as fresh and not rehearsed. This was a testament to the prep work of the two women. Maggie smoothly and efficiently brought her witness to the vital moment when Sarah reconfirmed her identification of Jessup.

“Was there any doubt at all in your mind when you identified Jason Jessup in nineteen eighty-six as the man who took your sister?”

“No, none at all.”

“It has been a long time, Sarah, but I ask you to look around the courtroom and tell the jury whether you see the man who abducted your sister on February sixteenth, nineteen eighty-six?”

“Yes, him.”

She spoke without hesitation and pointed her finger at Jessup.

“Would you tell us where he is seated and describe an article of clothing he is wearing?”

“He’s sitting next to Mr. Royce and he has a dark blue tie and a light blue shirt.”

I paused and looked at Judge Breitman.

“Let the record show that the witness has identified the defendant,” she said.

I went right back to Sarah.

“After all these years, do you have any doubt that he is the man who took your sister?”

“None at all.”

Maggie turned and looked at the judge.

“Your Honor, it may be a bit early but I think now would be a good time to take the afternoon break. I am going to go in a different direction with this witness at this point.”

“Very well,” Breitman said. “We will adjourn for fifteen minutes and I will expect to see everyone back here at two-thirty-five. Thank you.”

Sarah said she wanted to use the restroom and left the courtroom with Bosch running interference and making sure she would not cross paths with Jessup in the hallway. Maggie sat down at the defense table and we huddled.

“You have ’em, Maggie. This is what they’ve been waiting all week to hear and it’s better than they thought it was going to be.”

She knew I was talking about the jury. She didn’t need my approval or encouragement but I had to give it.

“Now comes the hard part,” she said. “I hope she holds up.”

“She’s doing great. And I’m sure Harry’s telling her that right now.”

Maggie didn’t respond. She started flipping through the legal pad that had her notes and the rough script of the examination. Soon she was immersed in the next hour’s work.

Thirty-four

Wednesday, April 7, 2:30 P.M .

Bosch had to shoo away the reporters when Sarah Gleason came out of the restroom. Using his body as a shield against the cameras he walked her back to the courtroom.

“Sarah, you’re doing really well,” he said. “You keep it up and this guy’s going right back to where he belongs.”

“Thanks, but that was the easy part. It’s going to get hard now.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Sarah. There is no easy part. Just keep thinking about your sister, Melissa. Somebody has to stand up for her. And right now that’s you.”

As they got to the courtroom door, he realized that she had smoked a cigarette in the restroom. He could smell it on her.

Inside, he walked her down the center aisle and delivered her to Maggie McFierce, who was waiting at the gate. Bosch gave the prosecutor the nod. She was doing really well herself.

“Finish the job,” he said.

“We will,” Maggie said.

After passing the witness off, Bosch doubled back up the center aisle to the sixth row. He had spotted Rachel Walling sitting in the middle of the row. He now squeezed around several reporters and observers to get to her. The space next to her was open and he sat down.

“Harry.”

“Rachel.”

“I think the man who was in that space was planning on coming back.”

“That’s okay. Once court starts, I have to move back up. You should’ve told me you were coming. Mickey said you were here the other day.”

“When I have some time I like to come by. It’s a fascinating case so far.”

“Well, let’s hope the jury thinks it’s more than fascinating. I want this guy back in San Quentin so bad I can taste it.”

“Mickey told me Jessup was moonlighting. Is that still-”

She lowered her voice to a whisper when she saw Jessup walking down the aisle and back to his seat at the defense table.

“-happening?”

Bosch matched her whisper.

“Yeah, and last night it almost went completely south on us. The SIS lost him.”

“Oh, no.”

The judge’s door opened and she stepped out and headed up to the bench. Everyone stood. Bosch knew he had to get back to the prosecution table in case he was needed.

“But I found him,” he whispered. “I have to go, but are you sticking around this afternoon?”

“No, I have to go back to the office. I’m just on a break right now.”

“Okay, Rachel, thanks for coming by. I’ll talk to you.”

As people started sitting back down he worked his way out of the row and then quickly went back down the aisle and through the gate to take a seat in the row of chairs directly behind the prosecution table.

McPherson continued her direct examination of Sarah Ann Gleason. Bosch thought that both prosecutor and witness had been doing an exceptional job so far, but he also knew that they were moving into new territory now and soon everything said before wouldn’t matter if what was said now wasn’t delivered in a believable and unassailable fashion.

“Sarah,” McPherson began, “when did your mother marry Kensington Landy?”

“When I was six.”

“Did you like Ken Landy?”

“No, not really. At first things were okay but then everything changed.”

“You, in fact, attempted to run away from home just a few months before your sister’s death, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“I show you People’s exhibit twelve, a police report dated November thirtieth, nineteen eighty-five. Can you tell the jury what that is?”

McPherson delivered copies of the report to the witness, the judge and the defense table. Bosch had found the report during his record search on the case. It had been a lucky break.

“It’s a missing persons report,” Gleason said. “My mother reported me missing.”

“And did the police find you?”

“No, I just came home. I didn’t have anyplace to go.”

“Why did you run away, Sarah?”

“Because my stepfather… was having sex with me.”

McPherson nodded and let the answer hang out there in the courtroom for a long moment. Three days ago Bosch would have expected Royce to jump all over this part of the testimony but now he knew that this played to the defense’s case as well. Kensington Landy was the straw man and any testimony that supported that would be welcomed.

“When did this start?” McPherson finally asked.

“The summer before I ran away,” Gleason responded. “The summer before Melissa got taken.”

“Sarah, I am sorry to put you through these bad memories. You testified earlier that you and Melissa shared some of each other’s clothes, correct?”

“Yes.”

“The dress she wore on the day she was taken, that was your dress, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

McPherson then introduced the dress as the state’s next exhibit and Bosch set it up for display to the jury on a headless manikin he placed in front of the jury box.

“Is this the dress, Sarah?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Now, you notice that there is a square of material removed from the bottom front hem of the dress. You see that, Sarah?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know why that was removed?”

“Yes, because they found semen on the dress there.”

“You mean forensic investigators?”

“Yes.”

“Now, is this something you knew back at the time of your sister’s death?”

“I know it now. I wasn’t told about it back then.”

“Do you know who the semen was genetically identified as belonging to?”

“Yes, I was told it came from my stepfather.”

“Did that surprise you?”

“No, unfortunately.”

“Do you have any explanation for how it could have gotten on your dress?”

Now Royce objected, saying that the question called for speculation. It also called for the witness to diverge from the defense theory, but he didn’t mention that. Breitman sustained the objection and McPherson had to find another way of getting there.

“Sarah, prior to your sister borrowing your dress on the morning she was abducted, when was the last time you wore it?”

Royce stood and objected again.

“Same objection. We’re speculating about events twenty-four years old and when this witness was only thirteen years old.”

“Your Honor,” McPherson rejoined, “Mr. Royce was fine with this so-called speculation when it fit with the defense’s scheme of things. But now he objects as we get to the heart of the matter. This is not speculation. Ms. Gleason is testifying truthfully about the darkest, saddest days of her life and I don’t think-”

“Objection overruled,” Breitman said. “The witness may answer.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

As McPherson repeated the question Bosch studied the jury. He wanted to see if they saw what he saw-a defense attorney attempting to stop the forward progression of truth. Bosch had found Sarah Gleason’s testimony to be fully convincing up to this point. He wanted to hear what she had to say and his hope was that the jury was in the same boat and would look unkindly upon defense efforts to stop her.

“I wore it two nights before,” Gleason said.

“That would have been Friday night, the fourteenth. Valentine’s Day.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you wear the dress?”

“My mother was making a nice dinner for Valentine’s Day and my stepfather said we should get dressed up for it.”

Gleason was looking down again, losing all eye contact with the jurors.

“Did your stepfather engage in a sexual act with you on that night?”

“Yes.”

“Were you wearing the dress at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Sarah, do you know if your father ejac-”

“He wasn’t my father!”

She yelled it and her voice echoed in the courtroom, reverberating around a hundred people who now knew her darkest secret. Bosch looked at McPherson and saw her checking out the jury’s reaction. It was then Bosch knew that the mistake had been intentional.

“I am sorry, Sarah. I meant your stepfather. Do you know, did he ejaculate in the course of this moment with you?”

“Yes, and some of it got on my dress.”

McPherson studied her notes, flipping over several pages of her yellow pad. She wanted that last answer to hang out there as long as possible.

“Sarah, who did the laundry at your house?”

“A lady came. Her name was Abby.”

“After that Valentine’s Day, did you put your dress in the laundry?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was afraid Abby would find it and know what happened. I thought she might tell my mother or call the police.”

“Why would that have been a bad thing, Sarah?”

“I… my mother was happy and I didn’t want to ruin things for her.”

“So what did you do with the dress that night?”

“I cleaned off the spot and hung it in my closet. I didn’t know my sister was going to wear it.”

“So two days later when she wanted to put it on, what did you say?”

“She already had it on when I saw her. I told her that I wanted to wear it but she said it was too late because it wasn’t on my list of clothes I didn’t share with her.”

“Could you see the stain on the dress?”

“No, I looked and because it was down at the hem I didn’t see any stain.”

McPherson paused again. Bosch knew from the prep work that she had covered all the points she wanted to in this line of questioning. She had sufficiently explained the DNA that was the cause of everyone’s being here. She now had to take Gleason further down the road of her dark journey. Because if she didn’t, Royce certainly would.

“Sarah, did your relationship with your stepfather change after your sister’s death?”

“Yes.”

“How so?”

“He never touched me again.”

“Do you know why? Did you talk to him about it?”

“I don’t know why. I never talked to him about it. It just never happened again and he tried to act like it had never happened in the first place.”

“But for you, all of this-your stepfather, your sister’s death-it took a toll, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“In what way, Sarah?”

“Uh, well, I started getting into drugs and I ran away again. I ran away a lot, actually. I didn’t care about sex. It was something I used to get what I needed.”

“And were you ever arrested?”

“Yes, a bunch of times.”

“For what?”

“Drugs mostly. I got arrested once for soliciting an undercover, too. And for stealing.”

“You were arrested six times as a juvenile and five more times as an adult, is that correct?”

“I didn’t keep count.”

“What drugs were you taking?”

“Crystal meth mostly. But if there was something else available, I would probably take it. That was the way I was.”

“Did you ever receive counseling and rehabilitation?”

“A lot of times. It didn’t work at first and then it did. I got clean.”

“When was that?”

“About seven years ago. When I was thirty.”

“You’ve been clean for seven years?”

“Yes, totally. My life is different now.”

“I want to show you People’s exhibit thirteen, which is an intake and evaluation form from a private rehab center in Los Angeles called the Pines. Do you remember going there?”

“Yes, my mother sent me there when I was sixteen.”

“Was that when you first started getting into trouble?”

“Yes.”

McPherson distributed copies of the evaluation form to the judge, clerk and defense table.

“Okay, Sarah, I want to draw your attention to the paragraph I have outlined in yellow in the evaluation section of the intake form. Can you please read it out loud to the jury?”

“Candidate reports PTSD in regard to the murder of her younger sister three years ago. Suffers unresolved guilt associated with murder and also evinces behavior typical of sexual abuse. Full psych and physical evaluation is recommended.”

“Thank you, Sarah. Do you know what PTSD means?”

“Posttraumatic stress disorder.”

“Did you undergo these recommended evaluations at the Pines?”

“Yes.”

“Did discussion of your stepfather’s sexual abuse come up?”

“No, because I lied.”

“How so?”

“By then I’d had sex with other men, so I never mentioned my stepfather.”

“Before revealing what you have today in court, did you ever talk about your stepfather and his having sex with you with anyone?”

“Just you and Detective Bosch. Nobody else.”

“Have you been married?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t even tell your husbands about this?”

“No. It’s not the kind of thing you want to tell anybody. You keep it to yourself.”

“Thank you, Sarah. I have no further questions.”

McPherson took her pad and returned to her seat, where she was greeted with a squeeze on the arm by Haller. It was a gesture designed for the jury to see but by then all eyes were on Royce. It was his turn and Bosch’s measure of the room was that Sarah Gleason had everybody riding with her. Any effort by Royce to destroy her ran the strong risk of backfiring against his client.

Royce did the smart thing. He decided to let emotions cool for a night. He stood and told the judge that he reserved the right to recall Gleason as a witness during the defense phase of the trial. In effect he put off her cross-examination. He then retook his seat.

Bosch checked his watch. It was four-fifteen. The judge told Haller to call his next witness but Bosch knew there were no more witnesses. Haller looked at McPherson and in unison they nodded. Haller then stood up.

“Your Honor,” he said. “The People rest.”

Thirty-five

Wednesday, April 7, 7:20 P.M .

The prosecution team convened for dinner at Casa Haller. I made a thick Bolognese using a store-bought sauce for a base and boiled a box of bow tie pasta. Maggie chipped in with her own recipe for Caesar salad that I had always loved when we were married but hadn’t had in years. Bosch and his daughter were the last to arrive, as Harry first took Sarah Ann Gleason back to her hotel room following court and made sure she was secure for the night.

Our daughters were shy upon meeting and embarrassed by how obvious their parents were about watching the long-awaited moment. They instinctively knew to move away from us and convened in the back office, ostensibly to do their homework. Pretty soon after, we started to hear laughter from down the hall.

I put the pasta and sauce into a big bowl and mixed it all together. I then called the girls out first to serve themselves and take their dishes back to the office.

“How’s it going back there, anyway?” I asked them while they were making their plates. “Any homework getting done?”

“Dad,” Hayley said dismissively, as if my question were a great invasion of privacy.

So I tried the cousin.

“Maddie?”

“Um, I’m almost finished with mine.”

Both girls looked at each other and laughed, as if either the question or its answer were cause for great glee. They scurried out of the kitchen then and back to the office.

I put everything out on the table, where the adults were sitting. The last thing I did was make sure the door to the office was closed so the girls would not hear our conversation and we would not hear theirs.

“Well,” I said as I passed the pasta to Bosch. “We’re finished with our part. Now comes the hard part.”

“The defense,” Maggie said. “What do we think they have in store for Sarah?”

I thought for a moment before answering and tried my first bow tie. It was good. I was proud of my dish.

“We know they’ll throw everything they can at her,” I finally said. “She’s the case.”

Bosch reached inside his jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He opened it on the table. I could see that it was the defense’s witness list.

“At the end of court today Royce told the judge he would complete the defense’s case in one day,” he said. “He said he’s calling only four witnesses but he’s got twenty-three listed on here.”

“Well, we knew all along that most of that list was subterfuge,” Maggie said. “He was hiding his case.”

“Okay, so we have Sarah coming back,” I said, holding up one finger. “Then we have Jessup himself. My guess is that Royce knows he has to put him on. That’s two. Who else?”

Maggie waited until she finished a mouthful of food before speaking.

“Hey, this is good, Haller. When did you learn to make this?”

“It’s a little thing I like to call Newman’s Own.”

“No, you added to it. You made it better. How come you never cooked like this when we were married?”

“I guess it came out of necessity. Being a single father. What about you, Harry? What do you cook?”

Bosch looked at us both like we were crazy.

“I can fry an egg,” he said. “That’s about it.”

“Let’s get back to the trial,” Maggie said. “I think Royce has got Jessup and Sarah. Then I think he’s got the secret witness we haven’t found. The guy from the last rehab center.”

“Edward Roman,” Bosch said.

“Right. Roman. That makes three and the fourth one could be his investigator or maybe his meth expert but is probably just bullshit. There is no fourth. So much of what Royce does is misdirection. He doesn’t want anybody’s eyes on the prize. Wants them looking anywhere but right at the truth.”

“What about Roman?” I said. “We haven’t found him, but have we figured out his testimony?”

“Not by a long shot,” Maggie said. “I’ve gone over and over this with Sarah and she has no idea what he’s going to say. She couldn’t remember ever talking about her sister with him.”

“The summary Royce provided in discovery says he will testify about Sarah’s ‘revelations’ about her childhood,” Bosch said. “Nothing more specific than that and, of course, Royce claims he didn’t take any notes during the interview.”

“Look,” I said, “we have his record and we know exactly what kind of guy we’re dealing with here. He’s going to say whatever Royce wants him to say. It’s that simple. Whatever works for the defense. So we should be less concerned by what he says-because we know it will be lies-and more concerned with knocking him out of the box. What do we have that can help us there?”

Maggie and I both looked at Bosch and he was ready for us.

“I think I might have something. I’m going to go see somebody tonight. If it pans out we’ll have it in the morning. I’ll tell you then.”

My frustrations with Bosch’s methods of investigation and communication boiled over at that point.

“Harry, come on. We’re part of a team here. This secret agent stuff doesn’t really work when we’re in that courtroom every day with our asses on the line.”

Bosch looked down at his plate and I saw the slow burn. His face grew as dark as the sauce.

“Your asses on the line?” he said. “I didn’t see anywhere in the surveillance reports that Jessup was hanging around outside your house, Haller, so don’t tell me about your ass being on the line. Your job is in that courtroom. It’s nice and safe and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But no matter what happens, you’re back in court the next day. You want your ass on the line, try working out there.”

He pointed out the window toward the view of the city.

“Hey, guys, let’s just calm down here,” Maggie said quickly. “Harry, what’s the matter? Has Jessup gone back to Woodrow Wilson? Maybe we should just revoke this guy and put him back in lockup.”

Bosch shook his head.

“Not to my street. He hasn’t been back there since that first night and he hasn’t been up to Mulholland in more than a week.”

“Then what is it?”

Bosch put his fork down and pushed his plate back.

“We already know there’s a good chance that Jessup has a gun from that meeting the SIS saw him have with a convicted gun dealer. They didn’t see what he got from the guy, but since it came wrapped in a towel, it doesn’t take a lot to figure it out. And then, you want to know what happened last night? Some bright guy on the surveillance decides to leave his post to use the john without telling anybody and Jessup walked right out of the net.”

“They lost him?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, until I found him right before he found me, which might not have turned out so well. And you know what he’s up to? He’s building a dungeon for somebody and for all I know-”

He leaned forward over the table and finished in an urgent whisper.

“-might be for my kid!”

“Whoa, wait, Harry,” Maggie said. “Back up. He’s building a dungeon? Where?”

“Under the pier. There’s like a storage room. He put a lock on the door and dropped canned food off there last night. Like he’s getting it ready for somebody.”

“Okay, that’s scary,” Maggie said. “But your daughter? We don’t know that. You said he went by your place only the one time. What makes you think-?”

“Because I can’t afford not to think it. You understand?”

She nodded.

“Yes, I do. Then I come back to what I just said. We violate him for associating with a known criminal-the gun dealer-and pull his OR release. There’s only a few days left in the trial and he obviously didn’t act out or make the mistake we thought he would. Let’s be safe and put him back inside until this is over.”

“And what if we don’t get the conviction?” Bosch said. “What happens then? This guy walks and that’ll also be the end of the surveillance. He’ll be out there without any eyes on him.”

That brought a silence to the table. I stared at Bosch and understood the pressure he was under. The case, the threat to his daughter, and no wife or ex-wife to help him out at home.

Bosch finally broke the uneasy silence.

“Maggie, are you taking Hayley home with you tonight?”

Maggie nodded.

“Yes, when we’re finished here.”

“Can Maddie stay with you two tonight? She brought a change of clothes in her backpack. I’d come by in the morning in time to take her to school.”

The request seemed to take Maggie by surprise, especially since the girls had just met. Bosch pressed her.

“I need to meet somebody tonight and I don’t know where it will take me,” Bosch said. “It might even lead to Roman. I need to be able to move without worrying about Maddie.”

She nodded.

“Okay, that’s fine. It sounds like they’re becoming fast friends. I just hope they don’t stay up all night.”

“Thank you, Maggie.”

About thirty seconds of silence went by before I spoke.

“Tell us about this dungeon, Harry.”

“I was standing in it last night.”

“Why the Santa Monica pier?”

“My guess is that it’s because of the proximity to what’s on top of the pier.”

“Prey.”

Bosch nodded.

“But what about noise? You’re saying this place is directly below the pier?”

“There are ways of controlling human sound. And last night the sound of waves crashing against the pilings under there was so loud you could’ve screamed all night and nobody would’ve heard you. You probably wouldn’t even hear a gunshot from down there.”

Bosch spoke with a certain authority of the dark places of the world and the evil they held. I lost my appetite then and pushed my plate away. I felt dread come inside me.

Dread for Melissa Landy and all the other victims in the world.

Thirty-six

Wednesday, April 7, 11:00 P.M .

Gilbert and Sullivan were waiting for him in a car parked on Lankershim Boulevard near its northern terminus at San Fernando Road. It was a blighted area populated primarily with used-car lots and repair shops. In the midst of all of this low-rent industry was a run-down motel advertising rooms for fifty dollars a week. The motel had no name on display. Just the lighted sign that said MOTEL.

Gilbert and Sullivan were Gilberto Reyes and John Sullivan, a pair of narcs assigned to the Valley Enforcement Team, a street-level drug unit. When Bosch was looking for Edward Roman he put the word out in all such units in the department. His assumption from Roman’s record was that he had never gotten away from the life as Sarah Gleason had. There had to be somebody in the department’s narco units with a line on him.

It paid off with a call from Reyes. He and his partner didn’t have a bead on Roman but they knew him from past interactions on the street and knew where his current trick partner was holed up and apparently awaiting his return. Long-term drug addicts often partnered with a prostitute, offering her protection in exchange for a share of the drugs her earnings bought.

Bosch pulled his car up behind the narcs’ UC car and parked. He got out and moved up to their car, getting in the back after checking the seat to make sure it was clean of vomit and any other detritus from the people they had transported lately.

“Detective Bosch, I presume?” said the driver, whom Bosch guessed was Reyes.

“Yeah, how are you guys?”

He offered his fist over the seat and they both gave him a bump while identifying themselves. Bosch had it wrong. The one who looked to be of Latin origin was Sullivan and the one who looked like a bag of white bread was Reyes.

“Gilbert and Sullivan, huh?”

“That’s what they called us when we got partnered,” Sullivan said. “Kind of stuck.”

Bosch nodded. That was enough for the meet-and-greet. Everybody had a nickname and a story to go with it. These guys together didn’t add up to how old Bosch was and they probably had no clue who Gilbert and Sullivan were, anyway.

“So you know Eddie Roman?”

“We’ve had the pleasure,” Reyes said. “Just another piece of human shit that floats around out here.”

“But like I told you on the phone, we ain’t seen him in a month or so,” Sullivan added. “So we got you his next best thing. His onion. She’s over there in room three.”

“What’s her name?”

Sullivan laughed and Bosch didn’t get it.

“Her name is Sonia Reyes,” said Reyes. “No relation.”

“That he knows of,” Sullivan added.

He burst into laughter, which Bosch ignored.

“Spell it for me,” he said.

He took out his notebook and wrote it down.

“And you’re sure she’s in the room?”

“We’re sure,” Reyes said.

“Okay, anything else I should know before I go in?”

“No,” Reyes said, “but we were planning on goin’ in with you. She might get squirrelly with you.”

Bosch reached forward and clapped him on the shoulder.

“No, I got this. I don’t want a crowd in the room.”

Reyes nodded. Message delivered. Bosch did not want any witnesses to what he might need to do here.

“But thanks for the help. It will be noted.”

“An important case, huh?” Sullivan said.

Bosch opened the door and got out.

“They all are,” he said.

He closed the door, slapped the roof twice and walked away.

The hotel had an eight-foot security fence around it. Bosch had to press a buzzer and hold his badge up to a camera. He was buzzed into the compound but walked right by the office and down a breezeway leading to the rooms.

“Hey!” a voice called from behind.

Bosch turned and saw a man with an unbuttoned shirt leaning out the door of the motel’s office.

“Where the fuck you goin’, dude?”

“Go back inside and shut the door. This is police business.”

“Don’t matter, man. I let you in but this is private property. You can’t just come through the-”

Bosch started quickly moving back up the breezeway toward the man. The man took his measure and backed down without Bosch saying a word.

“Never mind, man. You’re good.”

He quickly stepped back inside and closed the door. Bosch turned back and found room three without a further problem. He leaned close to the jamb to see if he could pick up any sound. He heard nothing.

There was a peephole. He put his finger over it and knocked. He waited and then knocked again.

“Sonia, open up. Eddie sent me.”

“Who are you?”

The voice was female, ragged and suspicious. Bosch used the universal pass code.

“Doesn’t matter. Eddie sent me with somethin’ to hold you over till he’s done.”

No response.

“Okay, Sonia, I’ll tell him you weren’t interested. I’ve got someone else who wants it.”

He took his finger off the peep and started walking away. Almost immediately the door opened behind him.

“Wait.”

Bosch turned back. The door was open six inches. He saw a set of hollow eyes looking out at him, a dim light behind them.

“Let me see.”

Bosch looked around.

“What, out here?” he said. “They got cameras all over the place.”

“Eddie tol’ me not to open the door for strangers. You look like a cop to me.”

“Well, maybe I am, but that doesn’t change that Eddie sent me.”

Bosch started to turn again.

“Like I said, I’ll tell him I tried. Have a nice night.”

“Okay, okay. You can come in but only to make the drop. Nothing else.”

Bosch walked back toward the door. She moved behind it and opened it. He entered and turned to her and saw the gun. It was an old revolver and he saw no bullets in the exposed chambers. Bosch raised his hands chest high. He could tell she was hurting. She’d been waiting too long for somebody, putting blind junkie trust in something that wouldn’t pay off.

“That’s not necessary, Sonia. Besides, I don’t think Eddie left you with any bullets.”

“I got one left. You want to try it?”

Probably the one she was saving for herself. She was skin and bones and close to the end of the line. No junkie went the distance.

“Give it to me,” she ordered. “Now.”

“Okay, take it easy. I have it right here.”

He reached his right hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a balled piece of aluminum foil he had taken from a roll in Mickey Haller’s kitchen. He held it out to the right of his body and he knew her desperate eyes would follow it. He shot his left hand out and snatched the gun out of her hand. He then stepped forward and roughly shoved her onto the bed.

“Shut up and don’t move,” he commanded.

“What is-?”

“I said shut up!”

He popped the gun’s barrel out and checked it. She had been right. There was one bullet left. He slid it out into his palm and then put it in his pocket. He hooked the gun into his belt. Then he pulled his badge wallet and opened it for her to see.

“You had that right,” he said.

“What do you want?”

“We’ll get to that.”

Bosch moved around the bed, looking about the threadbare room. It smelled like cigarettes and body odor. There were several plastic grocery bags on the floor containing her belongings. Shoes in one, clothing in a few others. On the bed’s lone side table was an overloaded ashtray and a glass pipe.

“What are you hurting for, Sonia. Crack? Heroin? Or is it meth?”

She didn’t answer.

“I can help you better if I know what you need.”

“I don’t want your help.”

Bosch turned and looked at her. So far things were going exactly as he predicted they would.

“Really?” he said. “Don’t need my help? You think Eddie Roman is going to come back for you?”

“He’s coming back.”

“I got news for you. He’s already gone. I’m guessing they got him cleaned up nice and neat and he won’t be coming back up here once he does what they want him to do. He’ll take the paycheck and when that runs out he’ll just find himself a new trick partner.”

He paused and looked at her.

“Somebody who still has something somebody would want to buy.”

Her eyes took on the distant look of someone who knows the truth when she hears it.

“Leave me alone,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You’ve been waiting for Eddie longer than you thought you would, huh? How many days you have left on the room?”

He read the answer in her eyes.

“Already past, huh? Probably giving the guy in the office blowjobs to let you stay. How long’s that going to last? Pretty soon he’ll just want the money.”

“I said go away.”

“I will. But you come with me, Sonia. Right now.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know everything you know about Eddie Roman.”