The Reversal (33 page)

The judge stared at Royce for a long moment, a disbelieving look on her face.

“Mr. Royce, Ms. Atwater is one of the prosecution’s key witnesses. Are you telling me you only need five minutes for cross-examination?”

“Well, of course it depends on the length of her answers, but I have only a few questions, Your Honor.”

“Very well, then. You may proceed. Ms. Atwater, you remain under oath.”

Royce moved to the lectern and I was as confused as the judge about the defense’s maneuver. I had expected Royce to take most of the next morning on cross. This had to be a trick. He had a DNA expert on his own witness list but I would never give up a shot at the prosecution’s witness.

“Ms. Atwater,” Royce said, “did all of the testing and typing and extracting you conducted on the hair specimen from the tow truck tell you how the specimen got inside that truck?”

To buy time Atwater asked Royce to repeat the question. But even upon hearing it a second time, she did not answer until the judge intervened.

“Ms. Atwater, can you answer the question?” Breitman asked.

“Uh, yes, I’m sorry. My answer is no, the lab work I conducted had nothing to do with determining how the hair specimen found its way into the tow truck. That was not my responsibility.”

“Thank you,” Royce said. “So to make it crystal clear, you cannot tell the jury how that hair—which you have capably identified as belonging to the victim—got inside the truck or who put it there, isn’t that right?”

I stood.

“Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.”

“Sustained. Would you like to rephrase, Mr. Royce?”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Ms. Atwater, you have no idea—other than what you were perhaps told—how the hair you tested found its way into the tow truck, correct?”

“That would be correct, yes.”

“So you can identify the hair as Melissa Landy’s but you cannot testify with the same sureness as to how it ended up in the tow truck, correct?”

I stood up again.

“Objection,” I said. “Asked and answered.”

“I think I will let the witness answer,” Breitman said. “Ms. Atwater?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Atwater said. “I cannot testify about anything regarding how the hair happened to end up in the truck.”

“Then I have no further questions. Thank you.”

I turned back and looked at the clock. I had two minutes. If I wanted to get the jury back on track I had to think of something quick.

“Any redirect, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

“One moment, Your Honor.”

I turned and leaned toward Maggie to whisper.

“What do I do?”

“Nothing,” she whispered back. “Let it go or you might make it worse. You made your points. He made his. Yours are more important—you put Melissa inside his truck. Leave it there.”

Something told me not to leave it as is but my mind was a blank. I couldn’t think of a question derived from Royce’s cross that would get the jury off his point and back onto mine.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge said impatiently.

I gave it up.

“No further questions at this time, Your Honor.”

“Very well, then, we will adjourn for the day. Court will reconvene at nine
A.M.
tomorrow and I admonish the jurors not to read newspaper accounts about this trial or view television reports or talk to family or friends about the case. I hope everyone has a good night.”

With that the jury stood and began to file out of the box. I casually glanced over at the defense table and saw Royce being congratulated by Jessup. They were all smiles. I felt a hollow in my stomach the size of a baseball. It was as though I had played it to near perfection all day long—for almost six hours of testimony—and then in the last five minutes managed to let the last out in the ninth go right between my legs.

I sat still and waited until Royce and Jessup and everybody else had left the courtroom.

“You coming?” Maggie said from behind me.

“In a minute. How about I meet you back at the office?”

“Let’s walk back together.”

“I’m not good company, Mags.”

“Haller, get over it. You had a great day.
We
had a great day. He was good for five minutes and the jury knows that.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a little bit.”

She gave up and I heard her leave. After a few minutes I reached over to the top file on the stack in front of me and opened it up halfway. A school photo of Melissa Landy was clipped inside the folder. Smiling at the camera. She looked nothing like my daughter but she made me think of Hayley.

I made a silent vow not to let Royce outsmart me again.

A few moments later, someone turned out the lights.

Thirty-two

Tuesday, April 6, 10:15
P.M
.

B
osch stood by the swing set planted in the sand a quarter mile south of the Santa Monica Pier. The black water of the Pacific to his left was alive with the dancing reflection of light and color from the Ferris wheel at the end of the boardwalk. The amusement park had closed fifteen minutes earlier but the light show would go on through the night, an electronic display of ever-changing patterns on the big wheel that was mesmerizing in the cold darkness.

Harry raised his phone and called the SIS dispatcher. He had checked in earlier and set things up.

“It’s Bosch again. How’s our boy?”

“He appears to be tucked in for the night. You must’ve worn him out in court today, Bosch. On the way home from the CCB he went to Ralphs to pick up some groceries and then straight home, where he’s been ever since. First night in five he hasn’t been out and about at this time.”

“Yeah, well, don’t count on it staying that way. They’ve got the back door covered, right?”

“And the windows and the car and the bicycle. We got him, Detective. Don’t worry.”

“Then I won’t. You’ve got my number. Call me if he moves.”

“Will do.”

Bosch put the phone away and headed toward the pier. The wind was strong off the water and a fine mist of sand stung his face and eyes as he approached the huge structure. The pier was like a beached aircraft carrier. It was long and wide. It had a large parking lot and an assortment of restaurants and souvenir shops on top. At its midpoint it had a full amusement park with a roller coaster and the signature Ferris wheel. And at its furthest extension into the sea it was a traditional fishing pier with a bait shop, management office and yet another restaurant. All of it was supported on a thick forest of wood pilings that started landside and carried seven hundred feet out beyond the wave break and to the cold depths.

Landside, the pilings were enclosed with a wooden siding that created a semi-secure storage facility for the city of Santa Monica. Only semi-secure for two reasons: The storage area was vulnerable to extreme high tides, which came on rare occasion during offshore earthquakes. Also, the pier spanned a hundred yards of beach, which entailed anchoring the wood siding in moist sand. The wood was always in the process of rotting and was easily compromised. The result was that the storage facility had become an unofficial homeless shelter that had to be periodically cleared out by the city.

The SIS observers had reported that Jason Jessup had slipped underneath the south wall the night before and had spent thirty-one minutes inside the storage area.

Bosch reached the pier and started walking its length, looking for the spot in the wood siding where Jessup had crawled under. He carried a mini Maglite and quickly found a depression where the sand had been dug out at the wall’s base and partially filled back in. He crouched down, put the light into the hole and determined that it was too small for him to fit through. He put the light down to the side, reached down and started digging like a dog trying to escape the yard.

Soon the hole seemed big enough and he crawled through. He was dressed for the effort. Old black jeans and work boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt beneath a plastic raid jacket he wore inside out to hide the luminescent yellow LAPD across the front and back.

He came up inside to a dark, cavernous space with slashes of light filtering down between the planks of the parking lot above. He stood up and brushed the sand off his clothes, then swept the area with the flashlight. It had been made for close-in work, so its beam did little to illuminate the far reaches of the space.

There was a damp smell and the sound of waves crashing through the pilings only twenty-five yards away echoed loudly in the enclosed space. Bosch pointed the light up and saw fungus caked on the pier’s crossbeams. He moved forward into the gloom and quickly came upon a boat covered by a tarp. He lifted up a loose end and saw that it was an old lifeguard boat. He moved on and came upon stacks of buoys and then stacks of traffic barricades and mobile barriers, all of them stenciled with
CITY OF SANTA MONICA
.

He next came to three stacks of scaffolding used for paint and repair projects on the pier. They looked long untouched and were slowly sinking in the sand.

Across the rear was a line of enclosed storage rooms, but the wood sidings had cracked and split over time, making storage in them porous at best.

The doors were unlocked and Bosch went down the line, finding each one empty until the second to the last. Here the door was secured with a shiny new padlock. He put the beam of his light into one of the cracks between the planks of the siding and tried to look in. He saw what appeared to be the edge of a blanket but that was all.

Bosch moved back to the door and knelt down in front of the lock. He held the light with his mouth and extracted two lock picks from his wallet. He went to work on the padlock and quickly determined that it had only four tumblers. He got it open in less than five minutes.

He entered the storage corral and found it largely empty. There was a folded blanket on the ground with a pillow on top of it. Nothing else. The SIS surveillance report had said that the night before, Jessup had walked down the beach carrying a blanket. It did not say that he had left it behind under the pier, and there had been nothing in the report about a pillow.

Harry wasn’t even sure he was in the same spot that Jessup had come to. He moved the light over the wall and then up to the underside of the pier, where he held it. He could clearly see the outline of a door. A trapdoor. It was locked from underneath with another new padlock.

Bosch was pretty sure that he was standing beneath the pier’s parking lot. He had occasionally heard the sound of vehicles up above as the pier crowd went home. He guessed that the trapdoor had been used as some sort of loading door for materials to be stored. He knew he could grab one of the scaffolds and climb up to examine the second lock but decided not to bother. He retreated from the corral.

As he was relocking the door with the padlock he felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket. He quickly pulled it out, expecting to learn from SIS dispatch that Jessup was on the move. But the caller ID told him the call was from his daughter. He opened the phone.

“Hey, Maddie.”

“Dad? Are you there?”

Her voice was low and the sound of crashing waves was loud. Bosch yelled.

“I’m here. What’s wrong?”

“Well, when are you coming home?”

“Soon, baby. I’ve got a little bit more work to do.”

She dropped her voice even lower and Bosch had to clamp a hand over his other ear to hear her. In the background he could hear the freeway on her end. He knew she was on the rear deck.

“Dad, she’s making me do homework that isn’t even due until next week.”

Bosch had once again left her with Sue Bambrough, the assistant principal.

“So next week you’ll be thanking her when everybody else is doing it and you’ll be all done.”

“Dad, I’ve been doing homework all night!”

“You want me to tell her to let you take a break?”

His daughter didn’t respond and Bosch understood. She had called because she wanted him to know the misery she was suffering. But she didn’t want him to do anything about it.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “When I get back I will remind Mrs. Bambrough that you are not in school when you are at home and you don’t need to be working the whole time. Okay?”

“I guess. Why can’t I just stay at Rory’s? This isn’t fair.”

“Maybe next time. I need to get back to work, Mads. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I want you in bed by the time I get home.”

“Whatever.”

“Good night, Madeline. Make sure all the doors are locked, including on the deck, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night.”

The disapproval in her voice was hard to miss. She disconnected the call ahead of Bosch. He closed his phone and just as he slid it into his pocket he heard a noise, like a banging of metal parts, coming from the direction of the hole he had slid through into the storage area. He immediately killed his flashlight and moved toward the tarp that covered the boat.

Crouching behind the boat, he saw a human figure stand up by the wall and start moving in the darkness without a flashlight. The figure moved without hesitation toward the storage corral with the new lock on it.

There were streetlights over the parking lot above. They sent slivers of illumination down through the cracks formed by retreating planks in the boardwalk. As the figure moved through these, Bosch saw that it was Jessup.

Harry dropped lower and instinctively reached his hand to his belt just to make sure his gun was there. With his other hand he pulled his phone and hit the mute button. He didn’t want the SIS dispatcher to suddenly remember to call him to alert him that Jessup was moving.

Bosch noticed that Jessup was carrying a bag that appeared to be heavily weighted. He went directly to the locked storage room and soon swung the door open. He obviously had a key to the padlock.

Jessup stepped back and Bosch saw a slash of light cross his face as he turned and scanned the entire storage area, making sure he was alone. He then went inside the room.

For several seconds, there was no sound or movement, then Jessup reappeared in the doorway. He stepped out and closed the door, relocking it. He then stepped back into the light and did a 180-degree scan of the larger storage area. Bosch lowered his body even further. He guessed that Jessup was suspicious because he had found the hole under the wall freshly dug out.