The Reversal
Page 13
Clinton shook his head.
"Not really. I mean I spoke to the detective who was in charge back then. He asked me questions. But I wasn't ever brought to court or anything like that."
Because they didn't need you back then, I thought. But I'm going to need you now.
"What makes you so sure that this threat from Jessup occurred on the day of the murder?"
"I just know it was that day. I remember that day because it's not every day that a guy you're working with gets arrested for murder."
He nodded as if to underscore the point.
I looked at Bosch to see if we had missed anything. Bosch took the cue and took back the lead.
"Bill, tell them what you told me about being in the police car with Jessup. On the way to Windsor."
Clinton nodded. He could be led easily and I took that as another good sign.
"Well, what happened was they really thought that Derek was the guy. The police did. He had a criminal record and lied about it and they found out. So that made him suspect numero uno. So they put Derek in the back of one patrol car and then me and Jason in another."
"Did they say where they were taking you?"
"They said they had additional questions, so we thought we were going to the police station. There were two officers in the car with us and we heard them talking about all of us being in a lineup. Jason asked them about it and they said it was no big thing, they just wanted guys in overalls because they wanted to see if a witness could pick out Derek."
Clinton stopped there and looked expectantly from Bosch to me and then to Maggie.
"So what happened?" I asked.
"Well, first Jason told the two cops that they couldn't just take us and put us in a lineup like that. They just said that they were following orders. So we go over to Windsor and pull up in front of a house. The cops got out and went and talked to the lead detective, who was standing there with some other detectives. Jason and I were watching out the windows but didn't see any witness or anything. Then the detective in charge goes inside the house and doesn't come back out. We don't know what's going on, and then Jason says to me he wants to borrow my hat."
"Your hat?" Maggie asked.
"Yeah, my Dodgers hat. I was wearing it like I always did and Jason said he needed to borrow it because he recognizes one of the other cops that was already standing there at the house when we pulled up. He said that he got in a fight with the guy over a tow and if he sees him there's going to be trouble. He goes on like that and says, let me have your hat."
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Well, I didn't think it was a big deal on account of I didn't know what I knew later, you know what I mean? So I gave him my hat and he put it on. Then when the cops came back to get us out of the car, they didn't seem to notice that the hat was switched. They made us get out of the car and we had to go over and stand next to Derek. We were standing there and then one of the cops gets a call on the radio--I remember that--and he turns and tells Jason to take off the hat. He did and then a few minutes later they're all of a sudden surrounding Jason and putting the cuffs on him, and it wasn't Derek, it was him."
I looked from Clinton to Bosch and then to Maggie. I could see in her expression that the hat story was significant.
"You know the funny thing?" Clinton asked.
"No, what?" I said.
"I never got that hat back."
He smiled and I smiled back.
"Well, we'll have to get you a new hat when this is all said and done. Now let me ask you the key question. What you have told us here, are you willing to testify to all of it at Jason Jessup's trial?"
Clinton seemed to think about it for a few seconds before nodding.
"Yeah, I could do that," he said.
I stood up and came around the desk, extending my hand.
"Then it looks like we've got ourselves a witness. Many thanks to you, Mr. Clinton."
We shook hands and then I gestured to Bosch.
"Harry, I should have asked you, did we cover everything?"
Bosch stood up as well.
"I think so. For now. I'll take Mr. Clinton back to his shop."
"Excellent. Thank you again, Mr. Clinton."
Clinton stood up.
"Please call me Bill."
"We will, I promise. We'll call you Bill and we'll call you as a witness."
Everybody laughed in that phony way and then Bosch shepherded Clinton out of the office. I went back to my desk and sat down.
"So tell me about the hat," I said to Maggie.
"It's a good connection," she said. "When we interviewed Sarah she remembered that Kloster radioed from the bedroom down to the street and had them make Jessup take off his hat. That was when she made the ID. Harry then looked through the case file and found a property list from Jessup's arrest. The Dodgers hat was on there. We're still trying to track his property--hard to do after twenty-four years. But it might have gone up to San Quentin. Either way, if we don't have the hat, we have the list."
I nodded. This was good on a number of levels. It showed witnesses independently corroborating each other, put a crack in any sort of defense contention that memories cannot be trusted after so many years and, last but not least, showed state of mind of the defendant. Jessup knew he was somehow in danger of being identified. Someone had seen him abduct the girl.
"All right, good," I said. "What do you think about the initial stuff, about how there was competition between them and somebody was going to get laid off? Maybe two of them."
"Again, it's good state-of-mind material. Jessup was under pressure and he acted out. Maybe this whole thing was about that. Maybe we should put a shrink on the witness list."
I nodded.
"Did you tell Bosch to find and interview Clinton?"
She shook her head.
"He did it on his own. He's good at this."
"I know. I just wish he'd tell me a little more about what he's up to."
Eighteen
Thursday, February 25, 11 A.M.
Rachel Walling wanted to meet at an office in one of the glass towers in downtown. Bosch went to the address and took the elevator up to the thirty-fourth floor. The door to the offices of Franco, Becerra & Itzuris, attorneys-at-law, was locked and he had to knock. Rachel answered promptly and invited him into a luxurious suite of offices that was empty of lawyers, clerks and anybody else. She led him to the firm's boardroom, where he saw the box and files he had given her the week before on a large oval table. They entered and he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over downtown.
Bosch couldn't remember being up so high in downtown. He could see all the way to Dodger Stadium and beyond. He checked out the civic center and saw the glass-sided PAB sitting next to the Los Angeles Times building. His eyes then scanned toward Echo Park and he remembered a day there with Rachel Walling. They had been a team then, in more ways than one. But now that seemed so long ago.
"What is this place?" he said, still staring out and with his back to her. "Where is everybody?"
"There isn't anybody. We just used this in a money-laundering sting. So it's been empty. Half of this building is empty. The economy. This was a real law office but it went out of business. So we just sort of borrowed it. The management was happy for the government subsidy."
"They were washing money from drugs? Guns?"
"You know I can't say, Harry. I am sure you'll read about it in a few months. You'll put it together then."
Bosch nodded as he remembered the firm's name on the door. Franco, Becerra & Itzuris: FBI. Clever.
"I wonder if management will tell the next tenants that this place was used by the bureau to take down some bad people. Friends of those bad people could come looking."
She didn't respond to that. She just invited him to sit down at the table. He did, taking a good look at her as she sat across from him. Her hair was down, which was unusual. He had seen her that way before but not while she was on duty. The dar
k ringlets framed her face and helped direct attention to her dark eyes.
"The firm's refrigerator is empty or I'd offer you something to drink."
"I'm fine."
She opened the box and started taking out the files he had given her.
"Rachel, I really appreciate this," Bosch said. "I hope it didn't disrupt your life too much."
"The work, no. I enjoyed it. But you, Harry, you coming back into my life was a disruption."
Bosch wasn't expecting that.
"What do you mean?"
"I'm in a relationship and I'd told him about you. About the single-bullet theory, all of that. So he wasn't happy that I've been spending my nights off working this up for you."
Bosch wasn't sure about how to respond. Rachel Walling always hid deeper messages in the things she said. He wasn't sure if there was more to be considered than what she had just said out loud.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. "Did you tell him it was only work, that I just wanted your professional opinion? That I went to you because I can trust you and you're the best at this?"
"He knows I'm the best at it, but it doesn't matter. Let's just do this."
She opened a file.
"My ex-wife is dead," he said. "She was killed last year in Hong Kong."
He wasn't sure why he'd blurted it out like that. She looked up at him sharply and he knew she hadn't known.
"Oh my God, I'm so sorry."
Bosch just nodded, deciding not to tell her the details.
"What about your daughter?"
"She lives with me now. She's doing okay but it's been pretty tough on her. It's only been four months."
She nodded and then seemed to lose her grounding as she took in what had just been said.
"What about you? I assume it's been rough for you, too."
He nodded but couldn't think of the right words. He had his daughter fully in his life now, but at a terrible cost. He realized that he had brought the subject up but couldn't talk about it.
"Look," he said, "that was weird. I don't know why I just laid that on you. You mentioned the single bullet and I remember I told you about her. We can talk about it some other time. I mean, if you want. Let's just get to the case now. Is that okay?"
"Yes, sure. I was just thinking about your daughter. To lose her mother and then have to move so far from the place she knows. I mean, I know living with you will be fine, but it's... quite an adjustment."
"Yeah, but they say kids are resilient because they actually are. She's got a lot of friends already and is doing well in school. It's been a major adjustment for both of us but I think she'll come out okay."
"And how will you come out?"
Bosch held her eyes for a moment before answering.
"I've already come out ahead. I have my daughter with me and she's the best thing in my life."
"That's good, Harry."
"It is."
She broke eye contact and finished removing the files and photos from the box. Bosch could see the transformation. She was now all business, an FBI profiler ready to report her findings. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook. It was in a folding leather case with a detective shield embossed on the cover. He opened it and got ready to write.
"I want to start with the photos," she said.
"Fine."
She spread out four photos of Melissa Landy's body in the Dumpster, turning them to face him. She then added two photos from the autopsy in a row above these. Photos of a dead child were never easy to look at for Bosch. But these were particularly difficult. He stared for a long moment before coming to the realization that the clutch in his gut was due to the setting of the body in a Dumpster. For the girl to be disposed of like that seemed almost like a statement about the victim and an added insult to those who loved her.
"The Dumpster," he said. "You think that was chosen as a statement?"
Walling paused as if considering it for the first time.
"I'm actually going at it from a different standpoint. I think that it was an almost spontaneous choice. That it wasn't part of a plan. He needed a place to dump the body where he wouldn't be seen and it wouldn't be immediately found. He knew about that Dumpster behind that theater and he used it. It was a convenience, not a statement."
Bosch nodded. He leaned forward and wrote a note on his pad to remind himself to go back to Clinton and ask about the Dumpster. The El Rey was in the Wilshire corridor the Aardvark drivers worked. It might have been familiar to them.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to start things off in the wrong direction," he said as he wrote.
"That's okay. The reason I wanted to start with the photos of the girl is that I believe that this crime may have been misunderstood from the very beginning."
"Misunderstood?"
"Well, it appears that the original investigators took the crime scene at face value and looked at it as the result of the suspect's kill plan. In other words, Jessup grabbed this girl, and his plan was to strangle her and leave her in the Dumpster. This is evidenced by the profile that was drawn up of the crime and submitted to the FBI and the California Department of Justice for comparison to other crimes on record."
She opened a file and pulled out the lengthy profile and submission forms prepared by Detective Kloster twenty-four years earlier.
"Detective Kloster was looking for similar crimes that he might be able to attach Jessup to. He got zero hits and that was the end of that."
Bosch had spent several days studying the original case file and knew everything that Walling was telling him. But he let her run with it without interruption because he had a feeling she would take him somewhere new. That was her beauty and art. It didn't matter that the FBI didn't recognize it and use her to the best of her abilities. He always would.
"I think what happened was that this case had a faulty profile from the beginning. Add to that the fact that back then the data banks were obviously not as sophisticated or as inclusive as they are now. This whole angle was misdirected and wrong and so no wonder they hit a dead end with it."
Bosch nodded and wrote a quick note.
"You tried to rebuild the profile?" he asked.
"As much as I could. And the starting point is right here. The photos. Take a look at her injuries."
Bosch leaned across the table and over the first row of photographs. He actually didn't see injuries to the girl. She had been dropped haphazardly into the almost full trash bin. There must have been stage building or a renovation project going on inside the theater, because the bin contained mostly construction refuse. Sawdust, paint buckets, small pieces of cut and broken wood. There were small cuts of wallboard and torn plastic sheeting. Melissa Landy was faceup near one of the corners of the Dumpster. Bosch didn't see a drop of blood on her or her dress.
"What injuries are we talking about?" he asked.
Walling stood up in order to lean over. She used the point of a pen to outline the places she wanted Bosch to look on each of the photos. She circled discolorations on the victim's neck.
"Her neck injuries," she said. "If you look you see the oval-shaped bruising on the right side of the neck, and on the other side you have a larger corresponding bruise. This evidence makes it clear that she was choked to death with one hand."
She used the pen to illustrate what she was saying.
"The thumb here on her right side and the four fingers on the left. One-handed. Now, why one-handed?"
She sat back down and Bosch leaned back away from the photos himself. The idea that Melissa had been strangled with one hand was not new to Bosch. It was in Kloster's original profile of the murder.
"Twenty-four years ago, it was suggested that Jessup strangled the girl with his right hand while he masturbated with his left. This theory was built on one thing--the semen collected from the victim's dress. It was deposited by someone with the same blood type as Jessup and so it was assumed to have come from him. You follow all of this?"
"I'm with you."
"They've done studies on that?"
"You'd be surprised. I sure was when I went online to look for this."
"I knew there was something wrong with the Internet."
She smiled but was not a bit embarrassed by the subject matter of their discussion. It was all in a day's work.
"They've done studies on everything, including which hand people use to wipe their butts. I actually found it to be fascinating reading. But the point here is that they had this wrong from the beginning. This murder did not occur during a sex act. Now let me show you a few other photos."
She reached across the table and slid all of the photos together in one stack and then put them to the side. She then spread out photos taken of the inside of the tow truck Jessup was driving on the day of the murder. The truck actually had a name, which was stenciled on the dashboard.
"Okay, so on the day in question, Jessup was driving Matilda," Walling said.
Bosch studied the three photos she had spread out. The cab of the tow truck was in neat order. Thomas Brothers maps--no GPS back then--were neatly stacked on top of the dashboard and a small stuffed animal that Bosch presumed was an aardvark hung from the rearview mirror. A cup holder on the center console held a Big Gulp from 7-Eleven and a sticker on the glove compartment door read Grass or Ass--Nobody Rides for Free.
With her trusty pen, Walling circled a spot on one of the photos. It was a police scanner mounted under the dashboard.
"Did anybody consider what this means?"
Bosch shrugged.
"Back then, I don't know. What's it mean now?"
"Okay, Jessup worked for Aardvark, which was a towing company licensed by the city. However, it wasn't the only one. There was competition among tow companies. The drivers listened to scanners, picking up police calls about accidents and parking infractions. It gave them the jump on the competition, right? Except that every tow truck had a scanner and everybody was listening and trying to get the jump on everyone else."