The Concrete Blonde (16 page)

“Good going,” Belk whispered to him. “Late for your own trial.”

Bosch ignored him and watched as Chandler began asking Irving general questions about his background and years on the force. They were preliminary questions; Bosch knew he couldn't have missed much.

“Look,” Belk whispered next. “If you don't care about this, at least pretend you do for the jury's sake. I know we are only talking about taxpayers' money here, but act like it's going to be your own money they will be deciding to give.”

“I got tied up. It won't happen again. You know, I'm trying to figure out this case. Maybe that doesn't matter to you, since you've already decided.”

He leaned back in his chair to get away from Belk. He was reminded that he had not eaten lunch by a sharp signal of resentment from his stomach. He tried to concentrate on the testimony.

“As assistant chief, what does your command include?” Chandler asked Irving.

“I am presently the commanding officer of all detective services.”

“At the time of the Dollmaker investigation, you were one rank below. A deputy chief, correct?”

“Yes.”

“As such you were in charge of the Internal Affairs Division, correct?”

“Yes. IAD and Operations Bureau, which basically means I was in charge of managing and allocating the department's personnel.”

“What is the mission of the IAD, as it is known?”

“To police the police. We investigate all citizen complaints, all interior complaints of misconduct.”

“Do you investigate police shootings?”

“Not per se. There is an Officer Involved Shooting team that handles the initial investigation. After that, if there is an allegation of misconduct or any impropriety, it is forwarded to IAD for follow-up.”

“Yes, and what do you recall of the IAD investigation of the shooting of Norman Church by Detective Harry Bosch?”

“I recall all of it.”

“Why was it referred to IAD?”

“The shooting team determined that Detective Bosch had not followed procedures. The shooting itself was within departmental policy but some of his actions prior to the gunfire were not.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Yes. Basically, he went there alone. He went to this man's apartment without backup, placing himself in danger. It ended in the shooting.”

“It's called cowboying it, isn't it?”

“I've heard the phrase. I don't use it.”

“But does it fit?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“You wouldn't know. Chief, would you know if Mr. Church would be alive today if Detective Bosch had not created this situation by playing cow—”

“Objection!” Belk shrieked.

But before he could walk to the lectern to argue, Judge Keyes sustained the objection and told Chandler to avoid speculative questions.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said pleasantly. “Chief, basically what you have testified to is that Detective Bosch set in motion a series of events that ultimately ended with an unarmed man being killed, am I right?”

“That is incorrect. The investigation found no substantive indication or evidence that Detective Bosch deliberately set this scenario in motion. It was spur of the moment. He was checking out a lead. When it looked good, he should have called for backup. But he didn't. He went in. He identified himself and Mr. Church made the furtive move. And here we are. That is not to say that the outcome would have been different had there been a backup. I mean, anybody who would disobey an order from a police officer holding a gun would probably do it with two officers holding guns.”

Chandler successfully had the last sentence of the answer struck from the record.

“To come to the conclusion that Detective Bosch did not intentionally set the situation into motion, did your investigators study all facets of the shooting?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“How about Detective Bosch, was he studied?”

“Unquestionably. He was rigorously questioned about his actions.”

“And about his motives?”

“His motives?”

“Chief, did you or any of your investigators know that Detective Bosch's mother was slain in Hollywood about thirty years ago by a killer who was never arrested? That prior to that, she had a record for multiple arrests for loitering?”

Bosch felt his skin go hot, as if klieg lights had been turned on him, and that everyone in the courtroom was staring at him. He was sure they were. But he looked only at Irving, who stared silently ahead, a palsied look on his face, the capillaries on either side of his nose flaring. When Irving didn't answer, Chandler prompted him.

“Did you know, Chief? It is referenced in Detective Bosch's personnel file. When he applied to the force, he had to say if he had ever been the victim of a crime. He lost his mother, he wrote.”

Finally, Irving said, “No, I did not know.”

“I believe that loitering was a euphemism for prostitution in the 1950s, when Los Angeles was engaged in a denial of crime problems such as rampant prostitution on Hollywood Boulevard, is that correct?”

“I don't recall that.”

Chandler asked to approach the witness and handed Irving a thin stack of papers. She gave him nearly a minute to read through them. He furrowed his brow as he read and Bosch could not see his eyes. The muscles of his cheeks bunched together below his temples.

“What is that, Chief Irving?” Chandler asked.

“It is what we call a due diligence report detailing the investigation of a homicide. It is dated November 3, 1962.”

“What is a due diligence report?”

“Every unsolved case is looked at annually—we call it due diligence—until such time that we feel the prognosis for bringing the case to a successful conclusion is hopeless.”

“What is the victim's name and circumstances of her death?”

“Marjorie Phillips Lowe. She was raped and strangled, October 31, 1961. Her body was found in an alley behind Hollywood Boulevard between Vista and Gower.”

“What is the investigator's conclusion, Chief Irving?”

“It says that at this time, which was a year after the crime, there are no workable leads and prognosis for successful conclusion of the case is deemed hopeless.”

“Thank you. Now, one more thing, is there a box on the cover form listing next of kin?”

“Yes, it identifies the next of kin as Hieronymus Bosch. Next to that in brackets it says ‘Harry.’ A box marked ‘son’ has been checked off.”

Chandler referred to her yellow pad for a few moments to let this information soak into the jury. It was so quiet Bosch could actually hear Chandler's pen scratching on the pad as she made a notation.

“Now,” she said, “Chief Irving, would knowing about Detective Bosch's mother have caused you to take a closer look at this shooting?”

After a long moment of silence, he said, “I can't say.”

“He shot a man suspected of doing almost the exact same thing that had happened to his mother—his mother's slaying being unsolved. Are you saying you don't know if that would have been germane to your investigation?”

“I, yes … I don't know at this time.”

Bosch wanted to put his head down on the table. He had noticed that even Belk had stopped scribbling notes and was just watching the interchange between Irving and Chandler. Bosch tried to shake off the anger he felt and concentrate on how Chandler had obtained the information. He realized she had probably gotten the P-file in a discovery motion. But the details of the crime and his mother's background would not be in it. She had most likely procured the due diligence report from the archives warehouse on a Freedom of Information petition.

He realized he had missed several questions to Irving. He began watching and listening again. He wished he had a lawyer like Money Chandler.

“Chief, did you or any IAD detectives go to the scene of the shooting?”

“No, we did not.”

“So your information about what happened came from members of the shooting team, who in turn got their information from the shooter, Detective Bosch, correct?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“You have no personal knowledge of the evidentiary layout: the toupee under the pillow, the cosmetics beneath the sink in the bathroom?”

“Correct. I was not there.”

“Do you believe all of that was there as I just stated?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“It was all there in the reports—reports from several different officers.”

“But all originating with the information from Detective Bosch, correct?”

“To a degree. There were investigators swarming that place. Bosch didn't tell them what to write.”

“Before, as you say, they swarmed the place, how long was Bosch there alone?”

“I don't know.”

“Is that piece of information on any report that you know of?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Isn't it true, Chief, that you wanted to fire Bosch and refer this shooting to the district attorney's office for the filing of criminal charges against him?”

“No, that is wrong. The DA looked at it and passed. It's routine. They said it was within policy, too.”

Well, score one for me, Bosch thought. It was the first misstep he had seen her take with Irving.

“What happened to the woman who gave Bosch this tip? Her name was McQueen. I believe she was a prostitute.”

“She died about a year later. Hepatitis.”

“At the time of her death was she part of an ongoing investigation of Detective Bosch and this shooting?”

“Not that I am aware of and I was in charge of IAD at the time.”

“What about the two IAD detectives who investigated the shooting? Lewis and Clarke, I believe their names were. Didn't they continue their investigation of Bosch long after the shooting had been determined officially to be within policy?”

Irving took a while to answer. He was probably leery of being led to slaughter again.

“If they conducted such an ongoing investigation it was without my knowledge or approval.”

“Where are those detectives now?”

“They are also dead. Both killed in the line of duty a couple years ago.”

“As the commander of IAD wasn't it your practice to initiate covert investigations of problem officers that you had marked for dismissal? Wasn't Detective Bosch one of those officers?”

“The answer to both questions is no. Unequivocally, no.”

“And what happened to Detective Bosch for his violation of procedures during the shooting of the unarmed Norman Church?”

“He was suspended for one deployment period and transferred within detective services to Hollywood Division.”

“In English, that means he was suspended for a month and demoted from the elite Robbery-Homicide squad to the Hollywood Division, correct?”

“You could say it that way.”

Chandler flipped a page up on her pad.

“Chief, if there were no cosmetics in the bathroom and no evidence that Norman Church was anything other than a lonely man who had taken a prostitute to his apartment, would Harry Bosch still be on the force? Would he have been prosecuted for killing this man?”

“I'm not sure I understand the question.”

“I'm asking, sir, did the alleged evidence tying Mr. Church to the killings that was allegedly found in his apartment save Detective Bosch? Did it not only save his job but save him from criminal prosecution?”

Belk stood up and objected, then walked to the lectern.

“She is asking him to speculate again, Your Honor. He can't tell what would have happened given an elaborate set of circumstances that didn't exist.”

Judge Keyes clasped his hands together in front of him and leaned back thinking. Then he abruptly leaned forward to the microphone.

“Ms. Chandler is laying the groundwork to make a case that the evidence in the apartment was fabricated. I'm not saying whether she has adequately done this or not, but since that is her mission I think the question is answerable. I'm going to allow it.”

After some thought, Irving finally said, “I can't answer that. I don't know what would have happened.”

11

Bosch was able to smoke two cigarettes during the ten-minute recess that followed the end of Irving's testimony. On redirect Belk had asked only a few questions, trying to rebuild a fallen house with a hammer but no nails. The damage was done.

Chandler had so far used the day to skillfully plant the seeds of doubt about both Church and Bosch. The alibi for the eleventh killing opened the door to Church's possible innocence. And now she had subscribed a motive to Bosch's action: revenge for a murder more than thirty years old. By the end of the trial the seeds would be in full bloom.

He thought about what Chandler had said about his mother. Could she have been right? Bosch had never consciously considered it. It was always there—the idea of revenge—flickering in some part of his mind with the distant memories of his mother. But he had never taken it out and examined it. Why had he gone out there alone that night? Why hadn't he called one of the others back in—Mora or any of the investigators in his command?

Bosch had always told himself and others it was because he doubted the whore's story. But now, he knew, it was his own story he was beginning to doubt.

Bosch was so deep in these thoughts that he did not notice Chandler had come through the door until the flare of her lighter caught his eye. He turned and stared at her.

“I won't stay long,” she said. “Just a half.”

“I don't care.”

He was almost done with the second cigarette.

“Who's next?”

“Locke.”

The USC psychologist. Bosch nodded, though he immediately saw this as a break from her good guy-bad guy pattern. Unless she counted Locke as a good guy.

“Well, you're doing good,” Bosch said. “But I guess you don't need me to tell you that.”

“No, I don't.”

“You may even win—you probably will win, but ultimately you're wrong about me.”

“Am I? … Do you even know?”

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

“I have to go.”

She stubbed the cigarette out. It was less than half smoked. It would be a prize for Tommy Faraway.

Dr. John Locke was a gray-bearded, bald and bespectacled man who looked as though he could have used a pipe to complete the picture of university professor and researcher of sexual behavior. He testified that he had offered his expertise to the Dollmaker task force after reading about the killings in the newspapers. He helped an LAPD psychiatrist draw up the first profiles of the suspect.