A Darkness More Than Night (16 page)
Finally, McCaleb closed the book when he realized that, at least for his purposes, the words about Hieronymus Bosch might not be important. If the painter’s work was subject to multiple interpretations, then the only interpretation that mattered would be that of the person who killed Edward Gunn. What mattered was what that person saw and took from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.
He opened the larger book and began to slowly study the reproductions. His viewing of reproduction plates of the paintings at the Getty had been hurried and encumbered by his not being alone.
He put his notebook on the arm of the couch with the plan to keep a tabulation of the number of owls he saw in the paintings as well as descriptions of each bird. He quickly realized that the paintings were so minutely detailed in the smaller-scale reproductions that he might be missing things of significance. He went down to the forward cabin to find the magnifying glass he had always kept in his desk at the bureau for use while examining crime scene photos.
As he was bent over a box full of office supplies he had cleared out of his desk five years before, McCaleb felt a slight bump against the boat and straightened up. He had tied the Zodiac up on the fantail, so it could not have been his own skiff. He was considering this when he felt the unmistakable up-and-down movement of the boat indicating that someone had just stepped aboard. His mind focused on the salon door. He was sure he had left it unlocked.
He looked down into the box he had just been sorting through and grabbed the letter opener.
As he came up the steps into the galley McCaleb surveyed the salon and saw no one and nothing amiss. It was difficult seeing past the interior reflection on the sliding door but outside in the cockpit, silhouetted by the streetlights on Crescent Street, there was a man. He stood with his back to the salon as if admiring the lights of the town going up the hill.
McCaleb moved quickly to the slider and pulled it open. He held the letter opener at his side but with the point of the blade up. The man standing in the cockpit turned around.
McCaleb lowered his weapon as the man stared at it with wide eyes.
“Mr. McCaleb, I —”
“It’s all right, Charlie, I just didn’t know who it was.”
Charlie was the night man in the harbor office. McCaleb didn’t know his last name. But he knew that he often visited Buddy Lockridge on nights Buddy stayed over. McCaleb guessed that Buddy was a soft touch for a quick beer every now and then on the long nights. That was probably why Charlie had rowed his skiff over from the pier.
“I saw the lights and thought maybe Buddy was here,” he said. “I was just paying a visit.”
“No, Buddy’s overtown tonight. He probably won’t be back till Friday.”
“Okay, then. I’ll just be going. Everything all right with you? The missus isn’t making you sleep on the boat, is she?”
“No, Charlie, everything’s fine. Just doing a little work.”
He held up the letter opener as if that explained what he was doing.
“All right then, I’ll be heading back.”
“Good night, Charlie. Thanks for checking on me.”
He went back inside and down to the office. He found the magnifying glass, with a light attachment, at the bottom of the box of office supplies.
For the next two hours he went through the paintings. The eerie landscapes of phantasmic demons surrounding human prey enthralled him once again. As he studied each work he marked particular findings such as the owls with yellow Post-its so that he could easily return to them.
McCaleb amassed a list of sixteen direct depictions of owls in the paintings and another dozen portrayals of owl-like creatures or structures. The owls were darkly painted and lurking in all the paintings like sentinels of judgment and doom. He looked at them and couldn’t help but think of the analogy of the owl as detective. Both creatures of the night, both watchers and hunters — firsthand observers of the evil and pain humans and animals inflict upon each other.
The single most significant finding McCaleb made during his study of the paintings was not an owl. Rather, it was the human form. He made the discovery as he used the lighted glass to examine the center panel of a painting called
The Last Judgment.
Outside the depiction of hell’s oven, where sinners were thrown, there were several bound victims waiting to be dismembered and burned. Among this grouping McCaleb found the image of a nude man bound with his arms and legs behind him. The sinner’s extremities had been stretched into a painful reverse fetal position. The image closely reflected what he had seen at center focus in the crime scene videotape and photos of Edward Gunn.
The Last Judgment.
Outside the depiction of hell’s oven, where sinners were thrown, there were several bound victims waiting to be dismembered and burned. Among this grouping McCaleb found the image of a nude man bound with his arms and legs behind him. The sinner’s extremities had been stretched into a painful reverse fetal position. The image closely reflected what he had seen at center focus in the crime scene videotape and photos of Edward Gunn.
McCaleb marked the finding with a Post-it and closed the book. When the cell phone on the couch next to him chirped just then, he bolted upright with a start. He checked his watch before answering and saw it was exactly midnight.
The caller was Graciela.
“I thought you were coming back tonight.”
“I am. I just finished and I’m on my way.”
“You took the cart down, right?”
“Yeah. So I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
“Yes, you will.”
McCaleb decided to leave everything on the boat, thinking that he needed to clear his mind before the next day. Carrying the files and the heavy books would only remind him of the heavy thoughts he carried within. He locked the boat and took the Zodiac to the skiff dock. At the end of the pier he climbed into the golf cart. He rode through the deserted business district and up the hill toward home. Despite his efforts to deflect them, his thoughts were of the abyss. A place where creatures with sharp beaks and claws and knives tormented the fallen in perpetuity. He knew one thing for sure at this point. The painter Bosch would have made a good profiler. He knew his stuff. He had a handle on the nightmares that rattle around inside most people’s minds. As well as those that sometimes get out.
15
Opening statements in the trial of David Storey were delayed while the attorneys argued over final motions behind closed doors with the judge. Bosch sat at the prosecution table and waited. He tried to clear his mind of all extraneous diversions, including his fruitless search for Annabelle Crowe the night before.
Finally, at ten forty-five, the attorneys came into the courtroom and moved to their respective tables. Then the defendant — today wearing a suit that looked like it would cover three deputies’ paychecks — was led into court from the holding cell and, at last, Judge Houghton took the bench.
It was time to begin and Bosch felt the tension in the courtroom ratchet up a considerable notch. Los Angeles had raised — or perhaps lowered — the criminal trial to the level of worldwide entertainment, but it was never seen that way by the players in the courtroom. They were playing for keeps and in this trial perhaps more than most there was a palpable sense of the enmity between the two opposing camps.
The judge instructed the deputy sheriff who acted as his bailiff to bring in the jury. Bosch stood with the others and turned and watched the jurors file in silently and take their seats. He thought he could see excitement in some of their faces. They had been waiting through two weeks of jury selection and motions for things to start. Bosch’s eyes rose above them to the two cameras mounted on the wall over the jury box. They gave a full view of the courtroom, except for the jury box.
After everyone was seated Houghton cleared his throat and leaned forward to the bench microphone while looking at the jurors.
“Ladies and gentlemen, how are you this morning?”
There was a murmured response and Houghton nodded.
“I apologize for the delay. Please remember that the justice system is in essence run by lawyers. As such it runs slowwwwwwly.”
There was polite laughter in the courtroom. Bosch noticed that the attorneys — prosecution and defense — dutifully joined in, a couple of them overdoing it. It had been his experience that while in open court a judge could not possibly tell a joke that the lawyers did not laugh at.
Bosch glanced to his left, past the defense table, and saw the other jury box was packed with members of the media. He recognized many of the reporters from television newscasts and press conferences in the past.
He scanned the rest of the courtroom and saw the public observation benches were densely packed with citizens, except for the row directly behind the defense table. There sat several people with ample room on either side who looked as if they’d spent the morning in a makeup trailer. Bosch assumed they were celebrities of some sort, but it wasn’t a realm he was familiar with and he could not identify any of them. He thought about leaning over to Janis Langwiser and asking but then thought better of it.
“We needed to clean up some last-minute details in my chambers,” the judge continued to the jury. “But now we’re ready to start. We’ll begin with opening statements and I need to caution you that these are not statements of fact but rather statements about what each side
thinks
the facts are and what they will endeavor to prove during the course of the trial. These statements are not to be considered by you to contain evidence. All of that comes later on. So listen closely but keep an open mind because a lot is still coming down the pipe. Now we’re going to start off with the prosecution and, as always, give the defendant the last word. Mr. Kretzler, you may begin.”
thinks
the facts are and what they will endeavor to prove during the course of the trial. These statements are not to be considered by you to contain evidence. All of that comes later on. So listen closely but keep an open mind because a lot is still coming down the pipe. Now we’re going to start off with the prosecution and, as always, give the defendant the last word. Mr. Kretzler, you may begin.”
The lead prosecutor stood and moved to the lectern positioned between the two lawyers’ tables. He nodded to the jury and identified himself as Roger Kretzler, deputy district attorney assigned to the special crimes section. He was a tall and gaunt prosecutor with a reddish beard beneath short dark hair and rimless glasses. He was at least forty-five years old. Bosch thought of him as not particularly likable but nevertheless very capable at his job. And the fact that he was still in the trenches prosecuting cases when others his age had left for the higher-paying corporate or criminal defense worlds made him all the more admirable. Bosch suspected he had no home life. On nights before the trial when a question about the investigation had come up and Bosch would be paged, the callback number was always Kretzler’s office line — no matter how late it was.
Kretzler identified his co-prosecutor as Janis Langwiser, also of the special crimes unit, and the lead investigator as LAPD detective third grade Harry Bosch.
“I am going to make this short and sweet so all the sooner we will be able to get to the facts, as Judge Houghton has correctly pointed out. Ladies and gentlemen, the case you will hear in this courtroom certainly has the trappings of celebrity. It has event status written all over it. Yes, the defendant, David N. Storey, is a man of power and position in this community, in this celebrity-driven age we live in. But if you strip away the trappings of power and glitter from the facts — as I promise we will do over the next few days — what you have here is something as basic as it is all too common in our society. A simple case of murder.”
Kretzler paused for effect. Bosch checked the jury. All eyes were fastened on the prosecutor.
“The man you see seated at the defense table, David N. Storey, went out with a twenty-three-year-old woman named Jody Krementz on the evening of last October twelfth. And after an evening that included the premiere of his latest film and a reception, he took her to his home in the Hollywood Hills where they engaged in consensual sexual intercourse. I don’t believe you will find argument from the defense table about any of this. We are not here about that. But what happened during or after the sex is what brings us here today. On the morning of October thirteenth the body of Jody Krementz was found strangled and in her own bed in the small home she shared with another actress.”
Kretzler flipped up a page of the legal pad on the lectern in front of him even though it seemed clear to Bosch and probably everyone else that his statement was memorized and rehearsed.
“In the course of this trial the State of California will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was David Storey who took Jody Krementz’s life in a moment of brutal sexual rage. He then moved or caused to be moved the body from his home to the victim’s home. He arranged the body in such a way that the death might appear accidental. And following this, he used his power and position in an effort to thwart the investigation of the crime by the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Storey, who you will learn has a history of abusive behavior toward women, was so sure that he would walk away untouched from his crime that in a moment of —”
Kretzler chose this moment to turn from the lectern and look down upon the seated defendant with a disdainful look. Storey stared straight ahead unflinchingly and the prosecutor finally turned back to the jury.
“—shall we say candor, he actually boasted to the lead investigator on the case, Detective Bosch, that he would do just that, walk away from his crime.”
Kretzler cleared his throat, a sign he was ready to bring it all home.
“We are here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find justice for Jody Krementz. To make it our business that her murderer not walk away from his crime. The State of California asks, and I personally ask, that you listen carefully during the trial and weigh the evidence fairly. If you do that, we can be sure that justice will be served. For Jody Krementz. For all of us.”
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