The Concrete Blonde Page 4

  As he watched her start, Bosch remembered the thud he had felt in his chest when he heard she was the lawyer for Church’s wife. To him, it was far more disturbing than learning Judge Keyes had been assigned the trial. She was that good. That was why they called her Money.

  “I would like to take you down the road a piece,” Chandler said and Bosch wondered if she was even developing a southern accent now. “I just want to highlight what our case is about and what we believe the evidence will prove. It is a civil rights case. It involves the fatal shooting of a man named Norman Church at the hands of the police.”

  She paused here. Not to look at her yellow pad but for effect, to gather all attention to what she would say next. Bosch looked over at the jury. Five women and seven men. Three blacks, three Latinos, one Asian and five whites. They were looking at Chandler with rapt attention.

  “This case,” Chandler said, “is about a police officer who wasn’t satisfied with his job and the vast powers it gave him. This officer also wanted your job. And he wanted Judge Keyes’s job. And he wanted the state’s job of administering the verdicts and sentences set down by judges and juries. He wanted it all. This case is about Detective Harry Bosch, who you see sitting at the defendant’s table.”

  She pointed at Bosch while drawing out the word dee-fend-ant. Belk immediately stood up and objected.

  “Miss Chandler does not need to point my client out to the jury or make sarcastic vocalizations. Yes, we are at the defense table. That’s because this is a civil case and in this country anybody can sue anybody, even the family of a—”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Chandler shouted. “He is using his objection to further try to destroy the reputation of Mr. Church, who was never convicted of anything because—”

  “Enough!” Judge Keyes thundered. “Objection sustained. Ms. Chandler, we don’t need to point. We all know who we are. We also do not need inflammatory accent being placed on any words. Words are beautiful and ugly, all on their own. Let them stand for themselves. As for Mr. Belk, I find it acutely annoying when opposing counsel interrupts opening statements or closing arguments. You will have your turn, sir. I would suggest that you not object during Ms. Chandler’s statement unless an egregious trespass on your client has occurred. I do not consider pointing at him worth the objection.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Belk and Chandler said in unison.

  “Proceed, Ms. Chandler. As I said in chambers this morning, I want opening statements done by the end of the day and I have another matter at four.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said again. Then, turning back to the jury, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we all need our police. We all look up to our police. Most of them—the vast majority of them—do a thankless job and do it well. The police department is an indispensable part of our society. What would we do if we could not count on police officers to serve and protect us? But that is not what this trial is about. I want you to remember that as the trial progresses. This is about what we would do if one member of that police force broke away from the rules and regulations, the policies that govern that police force. What we are talking about is called a rogue cop. And the evidence will show that Harry Bosch is a rogue cop, a man who one night four years ago decided to be judge, jury and executioner. He shot a man that he thought was a killer. A heinous serial killer, yes, but at the moment the defendant chose to pull out his gun and fire on Mr. Norman Church there was no legal evidence of that.

  “Now, you are going to hear from the defense all manner of supposed evidence that police said they found that connected Mr. Church to these killings, but remember during the trial where this evidence came from—the police themselves—and when it was found—after Mr. Church had been executed. I think we will show that this supposed evidence is questionable at best. Tainted, at best. And, in effect, you will have to decide if Mr. Church, a married man with two young children and a well-paying job at an aircraft factory, was indeed this killer, the so-called Dollmaker, or simply was made the fall guy, the scapegoat, by a police department covering up the sin of one of its own. The brutal, unwarranted and unnecessary execution of an unarmed man.”

  She continued on, speaking at length about the code of silence known to exist in the department, the force’s long history of brutality, the Rodney King beating and the riots. Somehow, according to Honey Chandler, these were all black flowers on a plant grown from a seed that was Harry Bosch’s killing of Norman Church. Bosch heard her go on but wasn’t really listening anymore. He kept his eyes open and occasionally made eye contact with a juror, but he was off on his own. This was his own defense. The lawyers, the jurors and the judge were going to take a week, maybe longer, to dissect what he had thought and done in less than five seconds. To be able to sit in the courtroom for this he was going to have to be able to go off on his own.

  In his private reverie he thought of Church’s face. At the end, in the apartment over the garage on Hyperion Street. They had locked eyes. The eyes Bosch had seen were killer’s eyes, as dark as the stone at Chandler’s throat.

  “. . . even if he was reaching for a gun, would that matter?” Chandler was saying. “A man had kicked the door open. A man with a gun. Who could blame someone for reaching, according to police, for a weapon for protection. The fact that he was reaching for something seemingly as laughable as a hairpiece makes this episode all the more repugnant. He was killed in cold blood. Our society cannot accept that.”

  Bosch tuned her out again and thought of the new victim, entombed for what was likely years in a concrete floor. He wondered if a missing-person report was ever taken, if there was a mother or father or husband or child wondering all this time about her. After returning from the scene he had started to tell Belk about the discovery. He asked the lawyer to ask Judge Keyes for a continuance, to delay the trial until the new death could be sorted out. But Belk had cut him off, telling him that the less he knew the better. Belk seemed so frightened of the implications of the new discovery that he determined that the best tack was to do the opposite of what Bosch suggested. He wanted to hurry the trial through before news of the discovery and its possible connection to the Dollmaker became public.

  Chandler was now near the end of the one-hour allotment for her opener. She had gone on at length about the police department’s shooting policy and Bosch thought she might have lost the grip she had on the jury in the beginning. For a while she had even lost Belk, who sat next to Bosch paging through his own yellow pad and rehearsing his opener in his head.

  Belk was a large man—almost eighty pounds overweight, Bosch guessed—and prone to sweating, even in the overly cooled courtroom. Bosch had often wondered during the jury selection if the sweating was Belk’s response to the burden of weight he carried or the burden of trying a case against Chandler and before Judge Keyes. Belk couldn’t be over thirty, Bosch guessed. Maybe five years max out of a middle-range law school and in over his head going up against Chandler.

  The word “justice” brought Bosch’s attention back. He knew that Chandler had turned it up a notch and was coming down the backstretch when she started using the word in almost every sentence. In civil court, justice and money were interchangeable because they meant the same thing.

  “Justice for Norman Church was fleeting. It lasted all of a few seconds. Justice was the time it took Detective Bosch to kick open the door, point his satin-finished 9mm Smith & Wesson and pull the trigger. Justice was one shot. The bullet Detective Bosch chose to execute Mr. Church with was called an XTP. That is short for extreme terminal performance. It’s a bullet that expands to 1.5 times its width on impact and takes out huge portions of tissue and organ in its path. It took out Mr. Church’s heart. That was justice.”

  Bosch noticed that many of the jurors were not looking at Chandler but at the plaintiff’s table. By leaning forward slightly he could see past the lectern and saw that the widow, Deborah Church, was dabbing tears on her cheeks with a tissue. She was a bell-shaped woman with
short dark hair and small pale blue eyes. She had been the epitome of the suburban housewife and mother until the morning Bosch killed her husband and the cops showed up at her house with their search warrant and the reporters showed up with their questions. Bosch had actually felt sorry for her, even counted her as a victim, until she hired Money Chandler and started calling him a murderer.

  “The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that Detective Bosch is a product of his department,” Chandler said. “A callous, arrogant machine that dispensed justice as he saw it on his own. You will be asked if this is what you want from your police department. You will be asked to right a wrong, to provide justice for a family whose father and husband was taken.

  “In closing, I would like to quote to you from a German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote something a century ago that I think is germane to what we are doing today. He said, ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you. . . .’

  “Ladies and gentlemen, that is what this case is about. Detective Harry Bosch has not only looked into the abyss, but on the night Norman Church was murdered it looked into him. The darkness engulfed him and Detective Bosch fell. He became that which he served to fight. A monster. I think you will find that the evidence will lead you to no other conclusion. Thank you.”

  Chandler sat down and patted her hand in a “there, there” gesture on Deborah Church’s arm. Bosch, of course, knew this was done for the jury’s sake, not the widow’s.

  The judge looked up at the brass hands of the clock built into the mahogany paneling above the courtroom door and declared a fifteen-minute recess before Belk would take the lectern. As he stood for the jury, Bosch noticed one of Church’s daughters staring at him from the front row of the spectators section. He guessed she was about thirteen. The older one, Nancy. He quickly looked away and then felt guilty. He wondered if anyone in the jury saw this.

  Belk said he needed the break time alone to go over his statement to the jury. Bosch felt like going up to the snack bar on the sixth floor because he still had not eaten, but it was likely a few of the jurors would go there, or worse yet, members of Church’s family. Instead, he took the escalator down to the lobby and went out to the ash can in front of the building. He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the base of the statue. He realized that he was clammy with sweat beneath his suit. Chandler’s hour-long opener had seemed like an eternity—an eternity with the eyes of the world on him. He knew the suit wouldn’t last the week and he would have to make sure his other one was clean. Thinking about such minor details finally helped relax him.

  He had already put one butt out in the sand and was on his second smoke when the steel-and-glass door to the courthouse opened. Honey Chandler had used her back to push open the heavy door and therefore hadn’t seen him. She turned as she came through the door, her head bent down as she lit a cigarette with a gold lighter. As she straightened and exhaled she saw him. She walked toward the ash can, ready to bury the fresh cigarette.

  “It’s okay,” Bosch said. “It’s the only one around as far as I know.”

  “It is, but I don’t think it does either of us good to have to face each other outside of court.”

  He shrugged and didn’t say anything. It was her move, she could leave if she wanted to. She took another drag on the cigarette.

  “Just a half. I have to get back in anyway.”

  He nodded and looked out toward Spring Street. In front of the county courthouse he saw a line of people waiting to go in through the metal detectors. More boat people, he thought. He saw the homeless man coming up the pavement to make his afternoon check of the ash can. The man suddenly turned around and walked back out to Spring and away. He looked back once uneasily over his shoulder as he went.

  “He knows me.”

  Bosch looked back at Chandler.

  “He knows you?”

  “He used to be a lawyer. I knew him then. Tom something-or-other. I can’t remember at the—Faraday, that’s it. I guess he didn’t want me to see him that way. But everybody around here knows about him. He’s the reminder of what can happen when things go terribly wrong.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story. Maybe your lawyer will tell you. Can I ask you something?”

  Bosch didn’t answer.

  “Why didn’t the city settle this case? Rodney King, the riots. It’s the worst time in the world to take a police case to trial. I don’t think Bulk—that’s what I call him, because I know he calls me Money. I don’t think he’s got a hold on this one. And you’ll be the one hung out to dry.”

  Bosch thought a moment before answering.

  “It’s off the record, Detective Bosch,” she said. “I’m just making conversation.”

  “I told him not to settle. I told him if he wanted to settle, I’d go out and pay for my own lawyer.”

  “That sure of yourself, huh?” She paused to inhale on her cigarette. “Well, we’ll see, I guess.”

  “I guess.”

  “You know it’s nothing personal.”

  He knew she would get around to saying that. The biggest lie in the game.

  “Maybe not for you.”

  “Oh, it is for you? You shoot an unarmed man and then you take it personally when his wife objects, when she sues you?”

  “Your client’s husband used to cut the strap off the purses of his victims, tie it in a slipknot around their neck and then slowly but steadily strangle them while he was raping them. He preferred leather straps. He didn’t seem to care about what women he did this to. Just the leather.”

  She didn’t even flinch. He hadn’t expected her to.

  “That’s late husband. My client’s late husband. And the only thing that is for sure in this case, that is provable, is that you killed him.”

  “Yeah, and I’d do it again.”

  “I know, Detective Bosch. That’s why we’re here.”

  She pursed her lips in a frozen kiss which sharply set the line of her jaw. Her hair caught the glint of the afternoon sun. She angrily stubbed her cigarette out in the sand and then went back inside. She swung the door open as if it were made of balsa wood.

  4

  Bosch pulled into the rear parking lot of the Hollywood station on Wilcox shortly before four. Belk had used only ten minutes of his allotted hour for his opening statement and Judge Keyes had recessed early, saying he wanted to start testimony on a separate day from openers so the jury would not confuse evidentiary testimony with the lawyers’ words.

  Bosch had felt uneasy with Belk’s short discourse in front of the jurors but Belk had told him there was nothing to worry about. He walked in through the back door near the tank and took the rear hallway to the detective bureau. By four the bureau is usually deserted. It was that way when Bosch walked in, except for Jerry Edgar, who was parked in front of one of the IBMs typing on a form Bosch recognized as a 51—an Investigating Officer’s Chronological Record. He looked up and saw Bosch approaching.

  “Whereyat, Harry?”

  “Right here.”

  “Got done early, I see. Don’t tell me, directed verdict. The judge threw Money Chandler out on her ass.”

  “I wish.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “What do you have so far?”

  Edgar said there was nothing so far. No identification yet. Bosch sat down at his desk and loosened his tie. Pounds’s office was dark so it was safe to light a cigarette. His mind trailed off into thinking about the trial and Money Chandler. She had captured the jury for most of her argument. She had, in effect, called Bosch a murderer, hitting with a gut-level, emotional charge. Belk had responded with a dissertation on the law and a police officer’s right to use deadly force when danger was near. Even if it turned out there was no danger, no gun beneath the pillow, Belk said, Church’s own actions created the climate of danger that allowed Bosch to act as he did.
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  Finally, Belk had countered Chandler’s Nietzsche by quoting The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Belk said Bosch had entered the “Dying Ground” when he kicked Church’s apartment door open. At that point he had to fight or perish, shoot or be shot. Second-guessing his actions afterward was unjust.

  Sitting across from Edgar now, Bosch acknowledged to himself that it hadn’t worked. Belk had been boring while Chandler had been interesting, and convincing. They were starting in the hole. He noticed Edgar had stopped talking and Harry had not registered anything he had said.

  “What about prints?” he asked.

  “Harry, you listening to me? I just said we finished with the rubber silicone about an hour ago. Donovan got prints off the hand. He said they look good, came up in the rubber pretty well. He’ll start the DOJ run tonight and probably by morning we’ll have the similars. It will probably take him the rest of the morning to go through them. But, at least, they’re not letting this one drown in the backup. Pounds gave it a priority status.”

  “Good, let me know what comes out. I’ll be in and out all week, I guess.”

  “Harry, don’t worry, I’ll let you know what we’ve got. But try to stay cool. Look, you got the right guy? You got any doubt about that?”

  “Not before today.”

  “Then don’t worry. Might is right. Money Chandler can blow the judge and the whole jury, it’s not going to change that.”