“Was it a bluff or part of the plan?”
“Neither. Bosch just knew. On this little table next to the couch was one of those baby monitor things, you know? Bosch saw that and he just knew. It was the wrong end. It was the transmitter part. It meant the receiver was somewhere else. If you have a kid it’s the other way around. You listen in the living room for noise from the baby room. But this was backwards. The profile from Griffin said this guy was a controller, that he likely used verbal coercion on his victim. Bosch saw that transmitter and something just clicked; this guy had her somewhere and got off on talking to her.”
“He was right?”
“Dead on. We found her in the garage in an unplugged freezer with three air holes drilled in it. It was like a coffin. The receiver part of the monitor was in there with her. She later told us that Hagen talked to her incessantly whenever he was in the house. He sang to her, too. Top forties. He’d change the words and sing about raping and killing her.”
McCaleb nodded. He wished he had been there on the case, for he knew what Bosch had felt, that sudden moment of coalescing, when the atoms smash together. When you just knew. A moment as thrilling as it was dreadful. The moment every homicide detective privately lives for.
“The reason I tell this story is because of what Bosch did and said after. Once we had Hagen in the back seat of one of the cars and started searching the house, Bosch stayed in the living room with that baby monitor. He turned it on and he spoke to her. He never stopped until we found her. He said, ‘Jennifer, we’re here. It’s all right, Jennifer, we’re coming. You’re safe and we’re coming for you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’ He never stopped talking to her, soothing her like that.”
She stopped for a long moment and McCaleb saw her eyes were on the memory.
“After we found her we all felt so good. It was the best high I’ve ever had on this job. I went to Bosch and said, ‘You must have kids. You spoke to her like she was one of your own.’ And he just shook his head and said no. He said, ‘I just know what it’s like to be alone and in the dark.’ Then he sort of walked away.”
She looked from the door back at McCaleb.
“Your talking about darkness reminded me of that.”
He nodded.
“What do we do if we come to a point that we know flat out that it was him?” she asked, her face turned back to the glass.
McCaleb answered quickly so that he wouldn’t have to think about the question.
“I don’t know,” he said.
• • •
After Winston had put the plastic owl back in the evidence box, gathered all of the pages he had shown her and left, McCaleb stood at the sliding door and watched her make her way up the ramp to the gate. He checked his watch and saw there was a lot of time before he needed to get ready for the night. He decided he would watch some of the trial on Court TV.
He looked back out the door and saw Winston putting the evidence box into the trunk of her car. Behind him somebody cleared his throat. McCaleb abruptly turned and there was Buddy Lockridge in the stairwell looking up at him from the lower deck. He had a pile of clothes clasped in his arms.
“Buddy, what the hell are you doing?”
“Man, that’s one weird case you’re working on.”
“I said what the hell are you doing?”
“I was going to do laundry and I came over here ’cause half my stuff was down in the cabin. Then you two showed up and when you started talking I knew I couldn’t come up.”
He held the pile of clothes in his arms up as proof of his story.
“So I just sat down there on the bed and waited.”
“And listened to everything we said.”
“It’s a crazy case, man. What are you going to do? I’ve seen that Bosch guy on Court TV. He kind of looks like he’s wound a little too tight.”
“I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
He pointed to the glass door.
“Leave, Buddy, and don’t tell a word of this to anybody. You understand me?”
“Sure, I understand. I was just —”
“Leaving.”
“Sorry, man.”
“So am I.”
McCaleb opened the slider and Lockridge walked out like a dog with his tail between his legs. McCaleb had to hold himself back from kicking him in the rear. Instead he angrily slid the door closed and it banged loudly in its frame. He stood there looking out through the glass until he saw Lockridge make it all the way up the ramp and over to the facilities building where there was a coin laundry.
His eavesdropping had compromised the investigation. McCaleb knew he should page Winston immediately and tell her, see how she wanted to handle it. But he let it go. The truth was, he didn’t want to make any move that might take him out of the investigation.
19
After putting his hand on the Bible and promising the whole truth, Harry Bosch took a seat in the witness chair and glanced up at the camera mounted on the wall above the jury box. The eye of the world was upon him, he knew. The trial was being broadcast live on Court TV and locally on Channel 9 . He tried to give no appearance of nervousness. But the fact was that more than the jurors would be studying him and judging his performance and personality. It was the first time in many years of testifying in criminal trials that he did not feel totally at ease. Being on the side of the truth was not a comfort when he knew the truth had to run a treacherous obstacle course set before it by a wealthy, connected defendant and his wealthy, connected attorney.
He put the blue binder — the murder book — down on the front ledge of the witness box and pulled the microphone toward him, creating a high-pitched squeal that hurt every set of ears in the courtroom.
“Detective Bosch, please don’t touch the microphone,” Judge Houghton intoned.
“Sorry, Your Honor.”
A deputy sheriff who acted as the judge’s bailiff came over to the witness box, turned the microphone off and adjusted its location. When Bosch nodded at its new position, the bailiff turned it back on. The judge’s clerk then asked Bosch to state his full, formal name and spell it for the record.
“Very well,” the judge said after Bosch finished. “Ms. Langwiser?”
Deputy District Attorney Janis Langwiser got up from the prosecution table and went to the attorney’s lectern. She carried a yellow legal tablet with her questions on it. She was second seat at the prosecution table but had worked with the investigators since the start of the case. It had been decided that she would handle Bosch’s testimony.
Langwiser was a young up-and-coming lawyer in the DA’s office. In the span of a few short years she had risen from a position of filing cases for more experienced lawyers in the office to handle to taking them all the way to court herself. Bosch had worked with her before on a politically sensitive and treacherous case known as the Angels Flight murders. The experience resulted in his recommendation of her as second chair to Kretzler. Since working with her again, Bosch had found his earlier impressions were well founded. She had complete command and recall of the facts of the case. While most other lawyers would have to sift through evidence reports to locate a piece of information, she would have the information and its location in the reports memorized. But her skill was not confined to the minutiae of the case. She never took her eye off the big picture — the fact that all their efforts were focused on putting David Storey away for good.
“Good afternoon, Detective Bosch,” she began. “Could you please tell the jury a bit about your career as a police officer.”
Bosch cleared his throat.
“Yes. I’ve been with the Los Angeles Police Department twenty-eight years. I have spent more than half of that time investigating homicides. I am a detective three assigned to the homicide squad of the Hollywood Division.”
“What does ‘detective three’ mean?”
“It means detective third grade. It is the highest detective rank, equivalent to
sergeant, but there are no detective sergeants in the LAPD. From detective three the next rank up would be detective lieutenant.”
“How many homicides would you say you have investigated in your career?”
“I don’t keep track. I would say at least a few hundred in fifteen years.”
“A few hundred.”
Langwiser looked over at the jury when she stressed the last word.
“Give or take a few.”
“And as a detective three you are currently a supervisor on the homicide squad?”
“I have some supervisory duties. I am also the lead officer on a three-person team that handles homicide investigations.”
“As such you were in charge of the team that was called to the scene of a homicide on October thirteenth of last year, correct?”
“That is correct.”
Bosch glanced over at the defense table. David Storey had his head down and was using his felt tip pen to draw on the sketch pad. He’d been doing it since jury selection began. Bosch’s eyes traveled to the defendant’s attorney and locked on those of J. Reason Fowkkes. Bosch held the stare until Langwiser asked her next question.
“This was the murder of Donatella Speers?”
Bosch looked back over at Langwiser.
“Correct. That was the name she used.”
“It was not her real name?”
“It was her stage name, I guess you would call it. She was an actress. She changed her name. Her real name was Jody Krementz.”
The judge interrupted and asked Bosch to spell the names for the court reporter, then Langwiser continued.
“Tell us the circumstances of the call out. Walk us through it, Detective Bosch. Where were you, what were you doing, how did this become your case?”
Bosch cleared his throat and had reached to the microphone to pull it closer when he remembered what happened the last time. He left the microphone where it was and leaned forward to it.
“My two partners and I were eating lunch at a restaurant called Musso and Frank’s on Hollywood Boulevard
. It was Friday and we usually eat there if we have the time. At eleven forty-eight my pager went off. I recognized the number as belonging to my supervisor, Lieutenant Grace Billets. While I was calling her, the pagers of my partners, Jerry Edgar and Kizmin Rider, also went off. At that point we knew we had probably drawn a case. I got ahold of Lieutenant Billets and she directed my team to one-thousand-one Nichols Canyon Road
, where patrol officers had earlier responded along with paramedics to an emergency call at that location. They reported a young woman was found dead in her bed under suspicious circumstances.”
“You then went to the address?”
“No. I had driven all three of us to Musso’s. So I drove back to the Hollywood station, which is a few blocks away, and dropped off my partners so they could get their own vehicles. Then all three of us proceeded separately to the address. You never know where you might have to go from a crime scene. It’s good procedure for each detective to have his or her own car.”
“At this time did you know who the victim was or what the suspicious circumstances of her death were?”
“No, I did not.”
“What did you find when you got there?”
“It was a small two-bedroom house overlooking the canyon. Two patrol cars were on the scene. The paramedics had already left once it was determined the victim was dead. Inside the house were two patrol officers and a patrol sergeant. In the living room there was a woman seated on the couch. She was crying. She was introduced to me as Jane Gilley. She shared the house with Ms. Krementz.”
Bosch stopped there and waited for a question. Langwiser was bent over the prosecution table whispering to her co-prosecutor, Roger Kretzler.
“Ms. Langwiser, does that conclude your questioning of Detective Bosch?” Judge Houghton asked.
Langwiser jerked upright, not having noticed that Bosch had stopped.
“No, Your Honor.”
She moved back to the lectern.
“Go on, Detective Bosch, tell us what happened after you entered the house.”
“I spoke to Sergeant Kim and he informed me that there was a young woman who was deceased in her bed in the bedroom to the right rear of the house. He introduced the woman on the couch and he said that his people had backed out of the bedroom without disturbing anything once the paramedics determined that the victim was dead. I then went down the short hallway to the bedroom and entered.”
“What did you find in there?”
“I saw the victim in the bed. She was a white female of slim build and blond hair. Her identification would later be confirmed as Jody Krementz, age twenty-three.”
Langwiser asked permission to show a set of photographs to Bosch. Houghton allowed it and Bosch identified the police evidence photos as being that of the victim in situ — as the body had been seen at first by police. The body was face up. The bedclothes were pulled to the side to reveal the body to be nude with the legs spread about two feet apart at the knees. The large breasts held their full shape despite the body being in a horizontal position, an indication of breast implants. The left arm was extended over the stomach. The palm of the left hand covered the pubic region. Two fingers of the left hand penetrated the vagina.
The victim’s eyes were closed and her head rested on a pillow but at a sharp angle to her neck. Wrapped tightly around her neck was a yellow scarf with one end looped up and over the top crossbar of the bed’s headboard. The end of the scarf came off the crossbar and extended to the victim’s right hand on the pillow above her head. The end of the silk scarf was wrapped several times around the hand.
The photographs were in color. A purplish-red bruise could be seen on the victim’s neck where the scarf had tightened against the skin. There was a rouge-like discoloration in and around the eye sockets. There was also a bluish discoloration running down the complete left side of the body, including the left arm and leg.
After Bosch identified the photographs as being that of Jody Krementz in situ, Langwiser asked that they be shown to the jury. J. Reason Fowkkes objected, stating that the photos would be highly inflammatory and prejudicial for jurors to see. The judge overruled the objection but told Langwiser to choose just one photo which would be representative of the lot. Langwiser chose the photo taken closest to the victim and it was handed to a man who sat in the first seat of the jury. While the photo was slowly passed from juror to juror and then to the alternates, Bosch watched their faces tighten with shock and horror. He pushed back on his seat and drank from a paper cup of water. After he drained it he caught the eye of the sheriff’s deputy and signaled for a refill. He then pulled himself back close to the microphone.
After the photo made its way through the jury, it was delivered to the clerk. It would be returned to the jurors, along with all other exhibits presented during the trial, during deliberation of a verdict.
Bosch watched Langwiser return to the lectern to continue the questioning. He knew she was nervous. They’d had lunch together in the basement cafeteria of the other court building and she had voiced her concerns. Though she was second seat to Kretzler, it was a big trial with potential career enhancing or destroying aspects for both of them.
She checked her legal pad before going on. “Detective Bosch, did there come a time after you had inspected the body that you declared the death to be subject to a homicide investigation?”
“Right away — before my partners even got there.”
“Why is that? Did it not appear to be an accidental death?”
“No, it —”
“Ms. Langwiser,” Judge Houghton interrupted. “One question at a time, please.”
“Sorry, Your Honor. Detective, did it not appear to you that the woman may have accidentally killed herself?”
“No, it did not. It appeared to me that someone attempted to make it look that way.”
Langwiser looked down at her pad for a long moment before going on. Bosc
h was pretty sure the pause was planned, now that the photograph and his testimony had secured the full attention of the jury.
“Detective, are you familiar with the term autoerotic asphyxia?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Could you please explain it to the jury?”
Fowkkes stood up and objected.
“Y’Honor, Detective Bosch may be a lot of things but there has been no proffer made to the court that he is an expert in human sexuality.”
There was a murmur of quiet laughter in the courtroom. Bosch saw a couple of the jurors suppress smiles. Houghton hit his gavel once and looked at Langwiser.
A Darkness More Than Night Page 16