His eyes suddenly caught on a familiar face across the intersection. Mickey Haller smiling from the back of a bus moving south on Fairfax. The advertisement carried a slogan that made Bosch want to dump the whole file in the trash can.
Reasonable Doubt for a Reasonable Fee.
Call the Lincoln Lawyer.
Bosch got up from the table and went to the trash can. He dropped his empty cup in and headed out the door.
7
Entering his house, Bosch looked at the empty dining room table and was tempted to sit down and spread out the printouts and photos from the case. But he knew his daughter would be getting home at any time and he didn’t want to risk her stumbling onto a bad scene. He went down the hallway to his bedroom, closed the door, and started spreading things out on his bed—right after he made it and smoothed the top covers.
What he spread out were the 8 x 10 color copies of the crime scene photos from Lexi Parks’s house. These included several dozen of the victim’s body as it had been found on her bed. They were shots taken from many angles and from many different distances ranging from full room shots to extreme close-ups of specific wounds and parts of the body.
There were also photos taken from many angles of all the other rooms in the house, and his plan was to look at them second.
The crime scene photos created a grisly tableau on the bed. The murder of Lexi Parks had been excessively violent and the harshness of it was not buffered by the one-step-removed process of viewing the scene through photos. There was a stark quality to the shots that Bosch was familiar with. Police photographers were not artists. Their job was to unflinchingly reveal all, and the photographer on the Parks case did just that.
Bosch had spread the photos out in a matrix of eight across and eight down and he stood at the end of the bed, taking in the overall murder mosaic. He then picked up individual photos one by one and studied them. He took a magnifying glass from a drawer in his dresser so that he could see some aspects of the photos even closer up.
It was difficult work. Bosch never got accustomed to viewing crime scenes. He had been to hundreds of them and seen the result of human inhumanity too many times to count. He always thought that if he got used to it, then he had lost something inside that was needed to do the job right. You had to have an emotional response. It was that response that lit the match that started the fire of relentlessness.
What lit the match this time was Lexi Parks’s hands. She had obviously tried to fight her attacker. She had struggled and put her arms up to ward off the assault. But she was quickly overpowered by repeated blows to her face. Her hands fell back on the bed, palms up, almost as if she was raising them in surrender. It touched Bosch. It made him angry, made him want to find and hurt whoever had done this.
How could Haller defend the man who did this?
Harry went into the bathroom to fill a glass with water. He drank it while standing in the doorway and looking at the photos from the side. He worked to calm himself so that he could continue to professionally assess the photos and the crime scene.
He went back to the bed and studied the photos again and soon started drawing conclusions about the crime. He believed that the victim had been asleep in her bed. She was on the right side of a king, having left room for her husband on the left. It appeared to Bosch that the killer had surprised her in her sleep, straddling her and taking immediate control as she awoke. He probably put one hand over her mouth, maybe held a weapon with the other. She got her hands loose to fight and then he started striking her.
And he didn’t stop. Long after her defenses were down and she was incapacitated, she was struck over and over again with a hard object. The face of the victim in the photos bore no resemblance to the face Bosch had seen accompanying the many newspaper stories generated by her murder. The face of the victim in the photos in fact bore no resemblance to any face at all. The nose was literally gone, interred in the pulp of blood and tissue that had been her face. Both eye sockets were crushed and misshapen, pieces of broken teeth and bone shone brightly in the blood. The eyes were half-lidded and the normal singular focus was broken. One stared forward, the other down and to the left.
Bosch sat down on a chair in the corner of the room and looked at the grid of photos from afar. The only thing worse would have been his being at the real scene, which would have added a multisensory dimension to his revulsion. No murder scene ever smelled pleasant. No matter how fresh, no matter how clean the environment.
His eyes kept going to the hands and he noticed from his new position a slight discoloration to the victim’s skin on the left wrist. He got up to go back to the bed. The photo was a wide shot that displayed the entire body in situ. He bent over the photo with the magnifying glass and saw that the woman’s wrist had slight tan lines left by a thick bracelet or, most likely, a watch.
Since he had seen nothing in the summaries or reports about the murder being possibly motivated by robbery, the missing watch was curious to Bosch. Had the victim been wearing it at the time of the attack? Had she taken it off to sleep? Had it fallen or been pulled off during her struggle to live? Had it been taken by her attacker as a souvenir?
Bosch studied the bed table next to the body. There was a bottle of water, a prescription bottle, and a paperback novel, but the watch wasn’t there. He went back to the printouts and looked at the property report. Since the victim was murdered in her own home, the property report dealt primarily with items from the crime scene and the house that were specifically examined by the investigators or forensics team. There was nothing here about the watch. It had apparently not come off in the victim’s struggle. It had not been noted as having been found in the bedding, on the floor, or anywhere else.
Bosch next flipped back into the Chronological Log to check if he had missed a mention of the watch in the early stages of the investigation—before there was a focus on Da’Quan Foster. He found nothing and wrote a note about the watch on the outside of the file below his other notations.
He collected all the photos of the body from the bed and put the stack to the side in case his daughter came home. He then moved to the second stack of photos, which were the shots taken of every room in the victim’s house at the time of the on-site investigation. This was a sign of the thoroughness of the investigation. Bosch knew that the photos from other rooms of the house would have been a call and request made by the lead investigators. It showed they were not cutting corners.
There were several photos taken in each room of the house and it took Bosch more than a half hour to work his way through them. He saw only the things that looked like the normal trappings of a neatly kept home where there were no children and both husband and wife worked full-time jobs and had active lifestyles. A second bedroom was used as a home gym and a third used as an office. The single-car garage was used to store bikes, surfboards, and camping equipment. There was no room to park a car.
The home office drew Bosch’s attention the longest. It looked to him like the room was primarily used by Lexi Parks. The knickknacks and souvenirs on the desk and on the bookcase shelves behind it appeared to have been collected during her duties as a city employee. There was a paperweight from the West Hollywood Rotary Club and framed certificates of appreciation from various gay and lesbian groups in regard to her involvement in the permitting process for the annual gay pride parade that drew participants and watchers from around the world. On the wall beside the desk was a framed diploma from Pepperdine University with the name Alexandra Abbott Parks. Clipped to the sides of the frame were various name tags from functions she had attended as part of her job. Bosch realized there was a large social component to Lexi Parks’s work that most likely added a layer of difficulty to the effort of tracking the point where she may have encountered her killer—whether it was Foster or someone else.
His eye held on the diploma frame when he saw a name tag that was unlike the others. It was a red-and-white juror tag that would have been issued by the county and worn b
y Parks when she was called in for jury service. All that was visible in the photo was a bar code—in keeping with juror anonymity—and no visible indication of when or in which courthouse the juror had served.
More than anything he had seen so far the juror tag bothered him. He had seen nothing in the chrono or other files about this being a branch of the investigation. Though Bosch would freely admit that an investigation was a subjective matter always open to second-guessing—by lawyers, judges, juries, and other investigators—this struck him as something that was either missed or hidden. If Lexi Parks had served on a criminal courts jury, that would have been an important arena for investigators to look into. It would have put her in a building where there was a routine flow of criminals and accused criminals. In a case like this, where the victim appeared to be chosen at random, there is always a crossing point. The place where the predator first encounters his prey. The job of the investigators is to find the crossing, the place where the circle of the victim’s life overlaps the circle of the predator.
Now Bosch had to consider whether investigators Lazlo Cornell and Tara Schmidt had missed this possible crossing or whether it was something they purposely left out of discovery to obfuscate the prosecution’s case.
He put the thought aside for the time being and went back to the other photographs. The office had two closets. Both were photographed from multiple angles. One was packed with summer dresses and blouses on hangers and shoe boxes on the shelves above. It looked like Parks rotated seasonal clothing. At the time of her death in February temperatures were cooler.
The second closet was used to store boxes from computers, printers, and other household items. On the top shelf Bosch saw a small square box that was made of what looked like brown leather. There was no brand name or logo but Bosch thought it might be a box that a watch would come in. He studied the photo with the magnifying glass. He knew there was no telling whether the box was empty, or whether it was for a woman’s or man’s watch. Brown leather favored it being a man’s watch box.
Bosch heard the front door of the house open. His daughter was home. He had started stacking the second set of photos when he heard her call to him.
“In my room,” he called back. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
He then stacked all the files and photos together on his bureau. He got out his phone and called Mickey Haller. The defense attorney answered right away and Bosch could tell by the background noise that he again was in his car.
“Okay,” Bosch said. “I’m ready to talk.”
8
They met at the bar at Musso’s and both ordered a vodka martini. It was early enough that getting one of the precious stools was not a problem. Bosch didn’t want to bring the thick stack of discovery documents in with him and draw attention, so he simply brought the empty file folder on which he had jotted his notes.
Haller was still in a crisp court suit but his tie was long gone. He noticed the empty file that Bosch put down on the old polished wood bar top.
“Well, you’re not giving it all back to me,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”
“Not yet, at least,” Bosch said.
“So, what do you want to talk about, then?”
“I’m ready to talk to your client. Can you get me in?”
“The easiest and quickest way is for us both to go in tomorrow. Attorney-client visit with an investigator in tow. It cuts through the bullshit. You have a problem with that?”
Bosch thought a moment before answering.
“Do I need to show a PI license? I don’t have that. I got one about twelve years ago but it’s long expired.”
“No need. I’ll print out a letter of engagement. It’ll say you’re working under the aegis of me and Dennis Wojciechowski, a state-licensed private investigator. That’ll do it.”
“Who the hell is Dennis Woja-whatever-you-just-said?”
“That’s Cisco, my investigator.”
“Now I know why they call him Cisco.”
“And a lot of other things. So I’m clear in the morning and have two things in the CCB after lunch. What’s your morning look like?”
“Open.”
“Then let’s meet at the attorneys’ window at nine tomorrow.”
Bosch nodded and didn’t say anything.
“So, what’ve you got?” Haller asked.
Bosch pulled the folder over front and center and looked at the few things he had written down during his review of the files.
“Well, these really don’t make sense out of context,” he said. “There are some things that should have been followed up on. Or maybe they were followed up on and we don’t know.”
“You mean they’ve hidden it from us,” Haller said, the tone of his voice building to outrage.
“Just hold your horses. We’re not in court and you don’t have to turn on the outrage. I’m not saying anything’s been hidden. I’m saying I saw a few things that bothered me about the investigation. I’m not talking about your client. I’m talking about things I would have followed up on. Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. And maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“They got lazy. They have a DNA match and maybe they don’t think they need to flip all the cards over before going all in. They also have a witness who blows up your client’s alibi. Those two things, for most cases that would be enough. Easy.”
Haller leaned in close to Bosch.
“Tell me about their alibi wit—is it a woman?”
“No, I think it’s a white male because of the name in the report, M. White. I think they’re hiding his identity as well as hiding him so they can sandbag you. It’s a guy who said he went to Foster’s studio that night to see him and he wasn’t there. That’s why I want to talk to Foster. See if he’s lying.”
“If he’s lying, I’m flying. I tell all my clients that.”
Haller poured the rest of his vodka from the shaker into his glass. He swished it around with the olive on the end of a toothpick, then ate the olive.
“Dinner,” he said. “You want another one?”
Bosch shook his head.
“I can’t stay. Maddie’s home tonight and I want to spend some time with her. She’s going out of town soon.”
“Out of town? Where?”
“They have a seniors’ retreat at her school. You know, before graduation. They go camping up at Big Bear, talk about the next step of their lives, stuff like that. I just want to be home as much as I can be when she’s there. I also need to get ready for tomorrow. Reread some stuff before I meet the man.”
“So have you made the call—guilty as charged?”
“Nope. I think it’s more likely than not but, like I said, there were some things they didn’t do that I would have done. I don’t like coming in and second-guessing but when you see it you see it.”
“Can’t un-see it.”
“Something like that.”
“What’s the biggest problem with the prosecution’s case?”
“Right now?”
“Based on what you read.”
Bosch took a drink while he thought of an answer and composed it properly.
“The crossing.”
“Meaning?”
“Motive and opportunity. They’ve got DNA that puts your man in that house and at that crime scene. But how did he get there? Why did he get there? This woman led a fairly public life. City Hall hearings, council meetings, public events, and so on. According to the records, they looked at hundreds of hours of video and they don’t have one single frame that has both Lexi Parks and Da’Quan Foster in it.”
Haller was nodding, seeing how he could play it.
“Added to that,” Bosch continued, “you have the crime scene. They had it profiled and there was all kinds of psychological shit going on in that crime. How does that connect to Foster—a reformed gangbanger from south L.A. with no history of this kind of violence? He may have been a shot caller for the Rollin’ 40s but this is a whole different thi
ng.”
“I can use this,” Haller said. “All of it. I’ll tear them a new one.”
“Look, these are things that bother me. That doesn’t mean they’ll bother a jury or a judge. I told you, I think it’s more likely your guy did it than not. I’m just reporting what I’m seeing. And I have a question.”
“What?”
“Foster’s DNA was in the state’s data bank because of the rape arrest that didn’t stick.”
“It didn’t stick because it was bullshit.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What it amounted to was a sweep. The victim was drugged and raped over a couple days in the back room of a drop house. Whoever the bastard was who did it, he also inked her with a ‘Property of the Rollin’ Forties’ tat. So she escapes and that’s their clue. They grabbed every guy they had in their Rollin’ Forties files and swabbed them all. It never amounted to anything because he didn’t do it.”
“That’s a bad story. Will it come up at trial?”
“Not if I can help it. These are very different circumstances. It’s not relevant.”
Bosch nodded and again thought about why he was getting involved with this case and this client.
“So we talk to him tomorrow morning,” Haller said. “Then what? What do you need from me?”
Bosch finished the last of his drink. He didn’t go for the shaker. He wanted no trace of inebriation on him when he got home. His daughter was stricter than a wife about that.
“Let’s see if I’m still working it after the interview. If I am, I think you tell the judge you want access to all the video Cornell and Schmidt looked at. They were looking for Da’Quan. But I wonder who else might have been in the places Lexi Parks went.”
Haller pointed at him, nodding.
“Alternate theory of the crime. Alternate suspect. Got it. This is good.”
“No, it’s not good. Not yet, at least. And I should warn you. I’m not going to be nice to your client tomorrow. He’s an accused murderer and that’s exactly how I’m going to treat him. By the time we’re finished, he might not want me working for you or him.”