Authors: Michael Connelly
Royce stood up immediately.
“Your Honor, I was not heard before the ruling.”
“It was your motion, Mr. Royce.”
“But I would like to respond to some of the things Mr. Haller said about—”
“Mr. Royce, I’ve made my ruling on it. I don’t see the need for further discussion. Do you?”
Royce realized his defeat could get even worse. He cut his losses.
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
He sat down. The judge then ended the hearing and we packed up and headed toward the rear doors. But not as quickly as Royce. He and his client and supposed co-counsel split the courtroom like men who had to catch the last train on a Friday night. And this time Royce didn’t bother stopping outside the courtroom to chat with the media.
“Thanks for sticking up for me,” Maggie said when we got to the elevators.
I shrugged.
“You stuck up for yourself. Did you really mean that, what you said about moving on from Bell to better things?”
“From him, yes. Definitely.”
I looked at her but couldn’t read her beyond the spoken line. The elevator doors opened, and there was Harry Bosch waiting to step off.
Thursday, March 4, 10:40
A.M
.
B
osch stepped off the elevator and almost walked right into Haller and McPherson.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“You missed it,” Haller said.
Bosch quickly turned and hit one of the bumpers on the elevator doors before it could close.
“Are you going down?”
“That’s the plan,” Haller said in a tone that didn’t hide his annoyance with Bosch. “I thought you weren’t coming to the hearing.”
“I wasn’t. I was coming to get you two.”
They rode the elevator down and Bosch convinced them to walk with him a block over to the Police Administration Building. He signed them in as visitors and they went up to the fifth floor, where Robbery-Homicide Division was located.
“This is the first time I’ve been here,” McPherson said. “It’s as quiet as an insurance office.”
“Yeah, I guess we lost a lot of the charm when we moved,” Bosch replied.
The PAB had been in operation for only six months. It had a quiet and sterile quality about it. Most of the building’s denizens, including Bosch, missed the old headquarters, Parker Center, even though it was beyond decrepit.
“I’ve got a private room over here,” he said, pointing to a door on the far side of the squad room.
He used a key to unlock the door and they walked into a large space with a boardroom-style table at center. One wall was glass that looked out on the squad room but Bosch had lowered and closed the blinds for privacy. On the opposite wall was a large whiteboard with a row of photos across the top margin and numerous notes written beneath each shot. The photos were of young girls.
“I’ve been working on this nonstop for a week,” Bosch said. “You probably have been wondering where I disappeared to so I figured it was time to show you what I’ve got.”
McPherson stopped just a few steps inside the door and stared, squinting her eyes and revealing to Bosch her vanity. She needed glasses but he’d never seen her wearing them.
Haller stepped over to the table, where there were several archival case boxes gathered. He slowly pulled out a chair to sit down.
“Maggie,” Bosch prompted. “Why don’t you sit down?”
McPherson finally broke from her stare and took the chair at the end of the table.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked. “They all look like Melissa Landy.”
“Well,” Bosch said. “Let me just go over it and you’ll draw your own conclusions.”
Bosch stayed on his feet. He moved around the table to the whiteboard. With his back to the board he started to tell the story.
“Okay, I have a friend. She’s a former profiler. I’ve never—”
“For whom?” Haller asked.
“The FBI, but does it matter? What I’m saying is that I’ve never known anybody who was better at it. So, shortly after I came into this I asked her informally to take a look at the case files and she did. Her conclusions were that back in ’eighty-six this case was read all wrong. And where the original investigators saw a crime of impulse and opportunity, she saw something different. To keep it short, she saw indications that the person who killed Melissa Landy may have killed before.”
“Here we go,” Haller said.
“Look, man, I don’t know why you’re giving me the attitude,” Bosch said. “You pulled me in as investigator on this thing and I’m investigating. Why don’t you just let me tell you what I know? Then you can do with it whatever you want. You think it’s legit, then run with it. You don’t, then shitcan it. I will have done my job by bringing it to you.”
“I’m not giving you any attitude, Harry. I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking about all the things that can complicate a trial. Complicate discovery. You realize that everything you are telling us has to be turned over to Royce now?”
“Only if you intend to use it.”
“What?”
“I thought you’d know the rules of discovery better than me.”
“I know the rules. Why did you bring us here for this dog and pony show if you don’t think we should use it?”
“Why don’t you just let him tell the story,” McPherson said. “And then maybe we’ll understand.”
“Then, go ahead,” Haller said. “Anyway, all I said was ‘Here we go,’ which I think is a pretty common phrase indicating surprise and change of direction. That’s all. Continue, Harry. Please.”
Bosch glanced back at the board for a moment and then turned back to his audience of two and continued.
“So my friend the profiler thinks Jason Jessup killed before he killed Melissa Landy, and most likely was successful in hiding his involvement in these previous crimes.”
“So you went looking,” McPherson said.
“I did. Now, remember our original investigator, Kloster, was no slouch. He went looking, too. Only problem was he was using the wrong profile. They had semen on the dress, strangulation and a body dump in an accessible location. That was the profile, so that is what he went looking for and he found no similars, or at least no cases that connected. End of story, end of search. They believed Jessup acted out this one time, was exceedingly disorganized and sloppy, and got caught.”
Harry turned and gestured to the row of photographs on the whiteboard behind him.
“So I went a different way. I went looking for girls who were reported missing and never showed up again. Girls reported as runaways as well as possible abductions. Jessup is from Riverside County so I expanded the search to include Riverside and L.A. counties. Since Jessup was twenty-four when he was arrested I went back to when he was eighteen, putting the search limits from nineteen eighty to ’eighty-six. As far as victim profile, I went Caucasian aged twelve to eighteen.”
“Why did you go as old as eighteen?” McPherson asked. “Our victim was twelve.”
“Rachel said—I mean, the profiler said that sometimes starting out, these people pick from their own peer group. They learn how to kill and then they start to define their targets according to their paraphilias. A paraphilia is—”
“I know what it is,” McPherson said. “You did all of this work yourself? Or did this Rachel help you?”
“No, she just worked up the profile. I had some help from my partner pulling all of this together. But it was tough because not all the records are complete, especially on cases that never got above runaway status, and a lot was cleared out. Most of the runaway files from back then are gone.”
“They didn’t digitize?” McPherson asked.
Bosch shook his head.
“Not in L.A. County. They prioritized when they switched over to computerized records and went back and captured records for major crimes. No runaway cases unless there was the possibility of abduction involved. Riverside County was different. Fewer cases out there so they archived everything digitally. Anyway, for that time period in these two counties, we came up with twenty-nine cases over the six-year period we’re looking at. Again, these were unresolved cases. In each the girl disappeared and never came home. We pulled what records we could find and most didn’t fit because of witness statements or other issues. But I couldn’t rule out these eight.”
Bosch turned to the board and looked at the photos of eight smiling girls. All of them long gone over time.
“I’m not saying that Jessup had anything to do with any of these girls dropping off the face of the earth, but he could have. As Maggie already noticed, they all have a resemblance to one another and to Melissa Landy. And by the way, the resemblance extends to body type as well. They’re all within ten pounds and two inches of one another and our victim.”
Bosch turned back to his audience and saw McPherson and Haller transfixed by the photographs.
“Beneath each photo I’ve put the particulars,” he said. “Physical descriptors, date and location of disappearance, the basic stuff.”
“Did Jessup know any of them?” Haller asked. “Is he connected in any way to any of them?”
That was the bottom line, Bosch knew.
“Nothing really solid—I mean, not that I’ve found so far,” he said. “The best connection that we have is this girl.”
He turned and pointed to the first photo on the left.
“The first girl. Valerie Schlicter. She disappeared in nineteen eighty-one from the same neighborhood in Riverside that Jessup grew up in. He would’ve been nineteen and she was seventeen. They both went to Riverside High but because he dropped out early, it doesn’t look like they were there at the same time. Anyway, she was counted as a runaway because there were problems in her home. It was a single-parent home. She lived with her mother and a brother and then one day about a month after graduating from high school, she split. The investigation never rose above a missing persons case, largely because of her age. She turned eighteen a month after she disappeared. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it an investigation. They more or less waited to see if she’d come home. She didn’t.”
“Nothing else?”
Bosch turned back and looked at Haller.
“So far that’s it.”
“Then discovery is not an issue. There’s nothing here. There’s no connection between Jessup and any of these girls. The closest one you have is this Riverside girl and she was five years older than Melissa Landy. This whole thing seems like a stretch.”
Bosch thought he detected a note of relief in Haller’s voice.
“Well,” he said, “there’s still another part to all of this.”
He stepped over to the case boxes at the end of the table and picked up a file. He walked it down and put it in front of McPherson.
“As you know, we’ve had Jessup under surveillance since he was released.”
McPherson opened the file and saw the stack of 8 × 10 surveillance shots of Jessup.
“With Jessup they’ve learned that there is no routine schedule, so they stick with him twenty-four/seven. And what they’re documenting is that he has two remarkably different lives. The public one, which is carried in the media as his so-called journey to freedom. Everything from smiling for the cameras and eating hamburgers to surfing Venice Beach to the talk-show circuit.”
“Yes, we’re well aware,” Haller said. “And most of it orchestrated by his attorney.”
“And then there’s the private side,” Bosch said. “The bar crawls, the late-night cruising and the middle-of-the-night visits.”
“Visits where?” McPherson asked.
Bosch went to his last visual aid, a map of the Santa Monica Mountains. He unfolded it on the table in front of them.
“Nine different times since his release Jessup has left the apartment where he stays in Venice and in the middle of the night driven up to Mulholland on top of the mountains. From there he has visited one or two of the canyon parks up there per night. Franklin Canyon is his favorite. He’s been there six times. But he also has hit Stone Canyon, Runyon Canyon and the overlook at Fryman Canyon a few times each.”
“What’s he doing at these places?” McPherson asked.
“Well, first of all, these are public parks that are closed at dusk,” Bosch replied. “So he’s sneaking in. We’re talking two, three o’clock in the morning. He goes in and he just sort of sits. He communes. He lit candles a couple times. Always the same spots in each of the parks. Usually on a trail or by a tree. We don’t have photos because it’s too dark and we can’t risk getting in close. I’ve gone out with the SIS a couple times this week and watched. It looks like he just sort of meditates.”
Bosch circled the four parks on the map. Each was off Mulholland and close to the others.
“Have you talked to your profiler about all this?” Haller asked.
“Yeah, I did, and she was thinking what I was thinking. That he’s visiting graves. Communing with the dead… his victims.”
“Oh, man…,” Haller said.
“Yeah,” Bosch said.
There was a long pause as Haller and McPherson considered the implications of Bosch’s investigation.
“Harry, has anybody done any digging in any of these spots?” McPherson asked.
“No, not yet. We didn’t want to go too crazy with the shovels, because he keeps coming back. He’d know something was up and we don’t want that yet.”
“Right. What about—”
“Cadaver dogs. Yeah, we brought them out there undercover yesterday. We—”
“How do you make a dog go undercover?” Haller asked.
Bosch started to laugh and it eased some of the tension in the room.
“What I mean is, there were two dogs and they weren’t brought out in official vehicles and handled by people in uniforms. We tried to make it look like somebody walking their dog, but even that was a problem because the park doesn’t allow dogs on these trails. Anyway, we did the best we could and got in and got out. I checked with SIS to make sure Jessup wasn’t anywhere near Mulholland when we went in. He was surfing.”
“And?” McPherson asked impatiently.
“These dogs are the type that just lie down on the ground when they pick up the scent of human decay. Supposedly they can pick it up through the ground after even a hundred years. Anyway, at three of the four places Jessup’s gone in these parks, the dogs didn’t react. But at one spot one of the two dogs did.”