Authors: Michael Connelly
“Can I see some ID, please?”
“Excuse me?”
“ID. I want to see some ID. A man in a shirt and tie walking the trails with ‘the wrong shoes’ is a little bit suspicious to me.”
Bosch shook his head and pulled out his badge wallet.
“Yeah, here’s my ID.”
He opened it and held it out and gave the ranger a few moments to study it. Bosch saw the nameplate on his uniform said Brorein.
“Okay?” Bosch said. “Can we get to my questions now, Officer Brorein?”
“I’m a city ranger, not an officer,” Brorein said. “Is this part of an investigation?”
“No, it’s part of a situation where you just answer my questions about the tree up on that trail.”
Bosch pointed in the direction he had come from.
“You get it now?” he asked.
Brorein shook his head.
“I’m sorry but you’re on my turf here and it’s my obligation to—”
“No, pal, you’re actually on my turf. But thanks for all the help. I’ll make a note of it in the report.”
Bosch walked away from him and headed back toward the parking clearing. Brorein called after him.
“As far as I know, there’s nothing special about that tree. It’s just a tree, Detective Borsh.”
Bosch waved without looking back. He added poor reading skills to the list of things he didn’t like about Brorein.
Wednesday, February 24, 2:15
P.M
.
M
y successes as a defense attorney invariably came when the prosecution was unprepared for and surprised by my moves. The entire government grinds along on routine. Prosecuting violators of the government’s laws is no different. As a newly minted prosecutor I took this to heart and vowed not to succumb to the comfort and dangers of routine. I promised myself that I would be more than ready for clever Clive Royce’s moves. I would anticipate them. I would know them before Royce did. And I would be like a sniper in a tree, waiting to skillfully pick them off from a distance, one by one.
This promise brought Maggie McFierce and me together in my new office for frequent strategy sessions. And on this afternoon the discussion was focused on what would be the centerpiece of our opponent’s pretrial defense. We knew Royce would be filing a motion to dismiss the case. That was a given. What we were discussing were the grounds on which he would make the motion. I wanted to be ready for each one. It is said that in war the sniper ambushes an enemy patrol by first taking out the commander, the radioman and the medic. If he accomplishes this, the remaining members of the patrol panic and scatter. This was what I hoped to quickly do when Royce filed his motion. I wanted to move swiftly and thoroughly with demoralizing arguments and answers that would put the defendant on strong notice that he was in trouble. If I panicked Jessup, I might not even have to go to trial. I might get a disposition. A plea. And a plea was a conviction. That was as good as a win on this side of the aisle.
“I think one thing he’s going to argue is that the charges are no longer valid without a preliminary hearing,” Maggie said. “This will give him two bites out of the apple. He’ll first ask the judge to dismiss but at the very least to order a new prelim.”
“But the verdict of the trial was what was reversed,” I said. “It goes back to the trial and we have a new trial. The prelim is not what was challenged.”
“Well, that’s what we’ll argue.”
“Good, you get to handle that one. What else?”
“I’m not going to keep throwing out angles if you keep giving them back to me to be prepared for. That’s the third one you’ve given me and by my scorecard you’ve only taken one.”
“Okay, I’ll take the next one sight unseen. What do you have?”
Maggie smiled and I realized I had just walked into my own ambush. But before she could pull the trigger, the office door opened and Bosch entered without knocking.
“Saved by the bell,” I said. “Harry, what’s up?”
“I’ve got a witness I think you two should hear. I think he’s going to be good for us and they didn’t use him in the first trial.”
“Who?” Maggie asked.
“Bill Clinton,” Bosch said.
I didn’t recognize the name as belonging to anyone associated with the case. But Maggie, with her command of case detail, brought it together.
“One of the tow truck drivers who worked with Jessup.”
Bosch pointed at her.
“Right. He worked with Jessup back then at Aardvark Towing. Now he owns an auto repair shop on LaBrea near Olympic. It’s called Presidential Motors.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “What does he do for us as a witness?”
Bosch pointed toward the door.
“I got him sitting out there with Lorna. Why don’t I bring him in and he can tell you himself?”
I looked at Maggie, and seeing no objection, I told Bosch to bring Clinton in. Before stepping out Bosch lowered his voice and reported that he had run Clinton through the crime databases and he had come up clean. He had no criminal record.
“Nothing,” Bosch said. “Not even an unpaid parking ticket.”
“Good,” Maggie said. “Now let’s see what he has to say.”
Bosch went out to the reception room and came back with a short man in his midfifties who was wearing blue work pants and a shirt with an oval patch above the breast pocket. It said Bill. His hair was neatly combed and he didn’t wear glasses. I saw grease under his fingernails but figured that could be remedied before he ever appeared in front of a jury.
Bosch pulled a chair away from the wall and placed it in the middle of the room and facing my desk.
“Why don’t you sit down here, Mr. Clinton, and we’ll ask you some questions,” he said.
Bosch then nodded to me, passing the lead.
“First of all, Mr. Clinton, thank you for agreeing to come in and talk to us today.”
Clinton nodded.
“That’s okay. Things are kind of slow at the shop right now.”
“What kind of work do you do at the shop? Is there a specialty?”
“Yeah, we do restoration. Mostly British cars. Triumphs, MGs, Jags, collectibles like that.”
“I see. What’s a Triumph TR Two-Fifty go for these days?”
Clinton looked up at me, surprised by my apparent knowledge of one of the cars he specialized in.
“Depends on the shape. I sold a beauty last year for twenty-five. I put almost twelve into the restoration. That and a lot of man-hours.”
I nodded.
“I had one in high school. Wish I’d never sold it.”
“They only made them for one year. ’Sixty-eight. Makes it one of the most collectible.”
I nodded. We had just covered everything I knew about the car. I just liked it because of its wooden dashboard and the drop top. I used to cruise up to Malibu in it on weekends, hang out on the surf beaches even though I didn’t know how to surf.
“Well, let’s jump from ’sixty-eight to ’eighty-six, okay?”
Clinton shrugged.
“Fine by me.”
“If you don’t mind, Ms. McPherson is going to take notes.”
Clinton shrugged again.
“So then, let’s start. How well do you remember the day that Melissa Landy was murdered?”
Clinton spread his hands.
“Well, see, I remember it real well because of what happened. That little girl getting killed and it turning out I was working with the guy who did it.”
“Must’ve been pretty traumatic.”
“Yeah, it was for a while there.”
“And then you put it out of your mind?”
“No, not exactly… but I stopped thinking about it all the time. I started my business and everything.”
I nodded. Clinton seemed genuine enough and honest. It was a start. I looked at Bosch. I knew he had pulled some nugget from Clinton that he believed was gold. I wanted him to take over.
“Bill,” Bosch said. “Tell them a little about what was going on with Aardvark at the time. About how business was bad.”
Clinton nodded.
“Yeah, well, back then we weren’t doing so hot. What happened was they passed a law that nobody could park on the side streets off of Wilshire without a resident sticker, you know? Anybody else, we got to tow. So we would go in the neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and hook up cars right and left on account of the church services. In the beginning. Mr. Korish was the owner and we were getting so many cars that he hired another driver and even started paying us for our overtime. It was fun because there were a couple other companies with the same contract, so we were all competing for tows. It was like keeping score and we were a team.”
Clinton looked at Bosch to see if he was telling the right story. Harry nodded and told him to keep going.
“So then it all kind of went bad. The people started getting wise and they stopped parking over there. Somebody said the church was even making announcements: ‘Don’t park north of Wilshire.’ So we went from having too much to do to not enough. So Mr. Korish said he had to cut back on costs and one of us was going to have to go, and maybe even two of us. He said he was going to watch our performance levels and make his decision based on that.”
“When did he tell you this in relation to the day of the murder?” Bosch asked.
“It was right before. Because all three of us were still there. See, he didn’t fire anybody yet.”
Taking over the questioning, I asked him what the new edict did to the competition among tow truck drivers.
“Well, it made it rough, you know. We were all friends and then all of a sudden we didn’t like each other because we wanted to keep our jobs.”
“How was Jason Jessup to work with then?”
“Well, Jason was real cutthroat.”
“The pressure got to him?”
“Yeah, because he was in last place. Mr. Korish put up a tote board to keep track of the tows and he was last place.”
“And he wasn’t happy about it?”
“No, not happy. He became a real prick to work with, excuse my French.”
“Do you remember how he acted on the day of the murder?”
“A little bit. Like I told Detective Bosch, he started claiming streets. Like saying Windsor was all his. And Las Palmas and Lucerne. Like that. And me and Derek—he was the other driver—we told him there were no rules like that. And he said, ‘Fine, try hooking a car on one of those streets and see what happens.’ ”
“He threatened you.”
“Yeah, you could say that. Definitely.”
“Do you remember specifically that Windsor was one of the streets he claimed was his?”
“Yes, I do. He claimed Windsor.”
This was all good information. It would go to the state of mind of the defendant. It would be a challenge getting it on the record if there wasn’t additional corroboration from Wilbern or Korish, if either was still alive and available.
“Did he ever act on that threat in any way?” Maggie asked.
“No,” Clinton said. “But that was the same day as the girl. So he got arrested and that was that. I can’t say I was too upset about seeing him go. Turned out Mr. Korish then laid off Derek ’cause he lied about not having a record. I was the last man standing. I worked there another four years—till I saved up the money to start my place.”
A regular American success story. I waited to see if Maggie had a follow but she didn’t. I did.
“Mr. Clinton, did you ever talk about any of this with the police or prosecutors twenty-four years ago?”
Clinton shook his head.
“Not really. I mean I spoke to the detective who was in charge back then. He asked me questions. But I wasn’t ever brought to court or anything like that.”
Because they didn’t need you back then, I thought. But I’m going to need you now.
“What makes you so sure that this threat from Jessup occurred on the day of the murder?”
“I just know it was that day. I remember that day because it’s not every day that a guy you’re working with gets arrested for murder.”
He nodded as if to underscore the point.
I looked at Bosch to see if we had missed anything. Bosch took the cue and took back the lead.
“Bill, tell them what you told me about being in the police car with Jessup. On the way to Windsor.”
Clinton nodded. He could be led easily and I took that as another good sign.
“Well, what happened was they really thought that Derek was the guy. The police did. He had a criminal record and lied about it and they found out. So that made him suspect numero uno. So they put Derek in the back of one patrol car and then me and Jason in another.”
“Did they say where they were taking you?”
“They said they had additional questions, so we thought we were going to the police station. There were two officers in the car with us and we heard them talking about all of us being in a lineup. Jason asked them about it and they said it was no big thing, they just wanted guys in overalls because they wanted to see if a witness could pick out Derek.”
Clinton stopped there and looked expectantly from Bosch to me and then to Maggie.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Well, first Jason told the two cops that they couldn’t just take us and put us in a lineup like that. They just said that they were following orders. So we go over to Windsor and pull up in front of a house. The cops got out and went and talked to the lead detective, who was standing there with some other detectives. Jason and I were watching out the windows but didn’t see any witness or anything. Then the detective in charge goes inside the house and doesn’t come back out. We don’t know what’s going on, and then Jason says to me he wants to borrow my hat.”
“Your hat?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah, my Dodgers hat. I was wearing it like I always did and Jason said he needed to borrow it because he recognizes one of the other cops that was already standing there at the house when we pulled up. He said that he got in a fight with the guy over a tow and if he sees him there’s going to be trouble. He goes on like that and says, let me have your hat.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal on account of I didn’t know what I knew later, you know what I mean? So I gave him my hat and he put it on. Then when the cops came back to get us out of the car, they didn’t seem to notice that the hat was switched. They made us get out of the car and we had to go over and stand next to Derek. We were standing there and then one of the cops gets a call on the radio—I remember that—and he turns and tells Jason to take off the hat. He did and then a few minutes later they’re all of a sudden surrounding Jason and putting the cuffs on him, and it wasn’t Derek, it was him.”