The Reversal (18 page)

“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.”

“Right. So what’s it mean?”

“Well, let’s look at the abduction first. It is pretty clear from the witness testimony and everything else that this was not a crime of great planning and patience. This was an impulse crime. That much they’ve had right from the beginning. We can talk about the motivating factors at length in a little while, but suffice it to say, something caused Jessup to act out in an almost uncontrollable way.”

“I think I might have motivating factors covered,” Bosch said.

“Good, I’m eager to hear about it. But for now, we will assume that some sort of internal pressure led Jessup to act on an undeniable impulse and he grabbed the girl. He took her back to the truck and took off. He obviously didn’t know about the sister hiding in the bushes and that she would sound the alarm. So he completes the abduction and drives away, but within minutes he hears the report about the abduction on the police scanner he has in the truck. That brings home to him the reality of what he’s done and what his predicament is. He never imagined things would move so fast. He more or less comes to his senses. He realizes he must abandon his plan now and move into preservation mode. He needs to kill the girl to eliminate her as a witness and then hide her body in order to prevent his arrest.”

Bosch nodded as he understood her theory.

“So what you’re saying is, the crime that occurred was not the crime that he intended.”

“Correct. He abandoned the true plan.”

“So when Kloster went to the bureau looking for similars, he was looking for the wrong thing.”

“Right again.”

“But could there actually have been a plan? You just said yourself that it was a crime of compulsion. He saw an opportunity and within a few seconds acted on it. What plan could there have been?”

“Actually, it is more than likely that he had a complex and complete plan. Killers like these have a paraphilia—a set construct of the perfect psychosexual experience. They fantasize about it in great detail. And as you can expect, it often involves torture and murder. The paraphilia is part of their daily fantasy life and it builds to the point where the desire becomes the urge which eventually becomes a compulsion to act out. When they do cross that line and act out, the abduction of the victim may be completely unplanned and improvisational, but the killing sequence is not. The victim is unfortunately dropped into a set construct that has played over and over in the killer’s mind.”

Bosch looked at his notebook and realized he had stopped taking notes.

“Okay, but you’re saying that didn’t happen here,” he said. “He abandoned the plan. He heard the abduction report on the scanner, and that took him from fantasy to reality. He realized that they could be closing in on him. He killed her and dumped her, hoping to avoid detection.”

“Exactly. And therefore, as you just noted, when investigators attempted to compare elements of this murder to others’, they were comparing apples and oranges. They found nothing that matched and believed that this was a onetime crime of opportunity and compulsion. I don’t think it was.”

Bosch looked up from the photos to Rachel’s eyes.

“You think he did this before.”

“I think the idea that he had acted out before in this way is compelling. It would not surprise me if you were to find that he was involved in other abductions.”

“You’re talking about more than twenty-four years ago.”

“I know. And since there was no linking of Jessup to known unsolved murders, we are probably talking about missing children and runaways. Cases where there was never a crime scene established. The girls were never found.”

Bosch thought of Jessup’s middle-of-the-night visits to the parks along Mulholland Drive. He thought he might now know why Jessup would light a candle at the base of a tree.

Then a more stunning and scary thought pushed through.

“Do you think a guy like this would use those crimes from so long ago to feed his fantasy now?”

“Of course he would. He’s been in prison, what other choice did he have?”

Bosch felt an urgency take hold inside. An urgency that came with the growing certainty that they weren’t dealing with an isolated instance of murder. If Walling’s theory was correct, and he had no reason to doubt it, Jessup was a repeater. And though he had been on ice for twenty-four years, he was now roaming the city freely. It would not be long now before he became vulnerable to the pressures and urges that had driven him to deadly action before.

Bosch came to a fast resolve. The next time Jessup was seized by the pressures of his life and overcome by the compulsion to kill, Bosch was going to be there to destroy him.

His eyes refocused and he realized Rachel was looking at him oddly.

“Thank you for all of this, Rachel,” he said. “I think I need to go.”

Nineteen

Thursday, March 4, 9
A.M
.

I
t was only a hearing on pretrial motions but the courtroom was packed. Lots of courthouse gadflies and media, and a fair number of trial lawyers were sitting in as well. I sat at the prosecution table with Maggie and we were going over our arguments once again. All issues before Judge Breitman had already been argued and submitted on paper. This would be when the judge could ask further questions and then announce her rulings. I had a growing sense of anxiety. The motions submitted by Clive Royce were all pretty routine and Maggie and I had submitted solid responses. We were also ready with oral arguments to back them, but a hearing like this was also a time for the unexpected. On more than one occasion I had sandbagged the prosecution in a pretrial hearing. And sometimes the case is won or lost before the trial begins with a ruling in one of these hearings.

I leaned back and looked behind us and then took a quick glance around the courtroom. I gave a phony smile and nod to a lawyer I saw in the spectator section, then turned back to Maggie.

“Where’s Bosch?” I asked.

“I don’t think he’s going to be here.”

“Why not? He’s completely disappeared in the last week.”

“He’s been working on something. He called yesterday and asked if he had to be here for this and I said he didn’t.”

“He’d better be working on something related to Jessup.”

“He tells me it is and that he’s going to bring it to us soon.”

“That’s nice of him. The trial starts in four weeks.”

I wondered why Bosch had chosen to call her instead of me, the lead prosecutor. I realized that this made me upset with Maggie as well as Bosch.

“Listen, I don’t know what happened between you two on your little trip to Port Townsend, but he should be calling me.”

Maggie shook her head as if dealing with a petulant child.

“Look, you don’t have to worry. He knows you’re the lead prosecutor. He probably figures you are too busy for the day-to-day updates on what he’s doing. And I’m going to forget what you said about Port Townsend. This one time. You make another insinuation like that and you and I are going to have a real problem.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just that—”

My attention was drawn across the aisle to Jessup, who was sitting at the defense table with Royce. He was staring at me with a smirk on his face and I realized he had been watching Maggie and me, maybe even listening.

“Excuse me a second,” I said.

I got up and walked over to the defense table. I leaned over him.

“Can I help you with something, Jessup?”

Before Jessup could say a word his lawyer cut in.

“Don’t talk to my client, Mick,” Royce said. “If you want to ask him something, then you ask me.”

Now Jessup smiled again, emboldened by his attorney’s defensive move.

“Just go sit down,” Jessup said. “I got nothing to say to you.”

Royce held his hand up to quiet him.

“I’ll handle this. You be quiet.”

“He threatened me. You should complain to the judge.”

“I said be quiet and that I would handle this.”

Jessup folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

“Mick, is there a problem here?” Royce asked.

“No, no problem. I just don’t like him staring at me.”

I walked back to the prosecution table, annoyed with myself for losing my calm. I sat down and looked at the pool camera set up in the jury box. Judge Breitman had approved the filming of the trial and the various hearings leading up to it, but only through the use of a pool camera, which would provide a universal feed that all channels and networks could use.

A few minutes later the judge took the bench and called the hearing to order. One by one we went through the defense motions, and the rulings mostly fell our way without much further argument. The most important one was the routine motion to dismiss for lack of evidence, which the judge rejected with little comment. When Royce asked to be heard, she said that it wasn’t necessary to discuss the issue further. It was a solid rebuke and I loved it even though outwardly I acted as though it were routine and boring.

The only ruling the judge wanted to discuss in detail was the oddball request by Royce to allow his client to use makeup during trial to cover the tattoos on his neck and fingers. Royce had argued in his motion that the tattoos were all prison tattoos applied while he was falsely incarcerated for twenty-four years. He said the tattoos could be prejudicial when noticed by jurors. His client intended to cover these with skin-tone makeup and he wanted to bar the prosecution from addressing it in front of the jury.

“I have to admit I have not had a motion like this come before me,” the judge said. “I’m inclined to allow it and hold the prosecution from drawing attention to it but I see the prosecution has objected to the motion, saying that it contains insufficient information about the content and history of these tattoos. Can you shed some light on the subject, Mr. Royce?”

Royce stood and addressed the court from his place at the defense table. I looked over and my eyes were drawn to Jessup’s hands. I knew the tattoos across his knuckles were Royce’s chief concern. The neck markings could largely be covered with a collared shirt, which he would wear with a suit at trial. But the hands were difficult to hide. Across the four digits of each hand he had inked the sentiment FUCK THIS and Royce knew that I would make sure it was seen by jurors. That sentiment was probably the chief impediment to having Jessup testify in his defense, because Royce knew I would find a way either casually or specifically to make sure the jury got his message.

“Your Honor, it is the defense’s position that these tattoos were administered to Mr. Jessup’s body while he was falsely imprisoned and are a product of that harrowing experience. Prison is a dangerous place, Judge, and inmates take measures to protect themselves. Sometimes it is through tattooing that is designed to be intimidating or to show an association the prisoner might not actually have or believe in. It would certainly be prejudicial for the jury to see, and therefore we ask for relief. This, I might add, is merely a tactic by the prosecution to delay the trial, and the defense firmly stands by its decision to not delay justice in this case.”

Maggie stood up quickly. She had handled this motion on paper and therefore it was hers to handle in court.

“Your Honor, may I be heard on the defense’s accusation?”

“One moment, Ms. McPherson, I want to be heard myself. Mr. Royce, can you explain your last statement?”

Royce bowed politely.

“Yes, of course, Judge Breitman. The defendant has begun to go through a tattoo removal process. But this takes time and will not be completed by trial. By objecting to our simple request to use makeup, the prosecution is trying to push the trial back until this removal process is completed. It’s an effort to subvert the speedy trial statute which since day one the defense, to the prosecution’s consternation, has refused to waive.”

The judge turned her gaze to Maggie McFierce. It was her turn.

“Your Honor, this is simply a defense fabrication. The state has not once asked for a delay or opposed the defense’s request for a speedy trial. In fact, the prosecution is ready for trial. So this statement is outlandish and objectionable. The true objection on the part of the prosecution to this motion is to the idea of the defendant being allowed to disguise himself. A trial is a search for truth, and allowing him to use makeup to cover up who he really is would be an affront to the search for truth. Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Judge, may I respond?” Royce, still standing, said immediately.

Breitman paused for a moment while she wrote a few notes from Maggie’s brief.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Royce,” she finally said. “I’m going to make a ruling on this and I will allow Mr. Jessup to cover his tattoos. If he chooses to testify on his behalf, the prosecution will not address this issue with him in front of the jury.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Maggie said.