The Concrete Blonde hb-3 Read online

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

  “Nothing further,” Belk said as he left the lectern.

  The judge called a ten-minute recess.

  * * *

  During the break, Bosch went out to the ash can. Money Chandler didn’t come out but the homeless man made a pass. Bosch offered him a whole cigarette, which he took and put in his shirt pocket. He was unshaven again and the slight look of dementia was still in his eyes.

  “Your name is Faraday,” Bosch said, as if speaking to a child.

  “Yeah, what about it, Lieutenant?”

  Bosch smiled. He had been made by a bum. All except for the rank.

  “Nothing about it. I just heard that’s what it was. I also heard you were a lawyer once.”

  “I still am. I’m just not practicing.”

  He turned and watched a jail bus go by on Spring, heading to the courthouse. It was full of angry faces looking out through the black wire windows. Somebody by one of the back windows made Bosch as a cop, too, and stuck his middle index finger up through the wire. Bosch smiled back at him.

  “My name was Thomas Faraday. But now I prefer Tommy Faraway.”

  “What happened to make you stop practicing law?”

  Tommy looked back at him with milky eyes.

  “Justice is what happened. Thanks for the smoke.” He walked away then, cup in hand, and headed toward City Hall. Maybe that was his turf, too.

  * * *

  After the break, Chandler called a lab analyst from the coroner’s office named Victor Amado. He was a very small and bookish-looking man with eyes that shifted from the judge to the jury as he walked to the witness chair. He was balding badly, though he seemed to be no more than twenty-eight. Bosch remembered that four years earlier he had all his hair and members of the task force referred to him as The Kid. He knew Belk was going to call Amado as a witness if Chandler didn’t.

  Belk leaned over and whispered that Chandler was following a good guy-bad guy pattern by alternating police witnesses with her sympathetic witnesses.

  “She’ll probably put one of the daughters up there after Amado,” he said. “As a strategy, it is completely unoriginal.”

  Bosch didn’t mention that Belk’s trust-us-we’re-the-cops defense had been around as long as the civil suit.

  Amado testified in painstaking detail about how he had been given all of the bottles and compacts containing makeup that were found in Church’s Hyperion apartment and had then traced them to specific victims of the Dollmaker. He said he had come up with nine separate lots or groupings of makeup-mascara, blush, eyeliner, lipstick, etc. Each lot was connected through chemical analysis to samples taken from the faces of the victims. This was further corroborated by detectives who interviewed relatives and friends to determine what brands the victims were known to use. It all matched up, Amado said. And in one instance, he added, an eyelash found on a mascara brush in Church’s bathroom cabinet was identified as having come from the second victim.

  “What about the two victims no matching makeup was found for?” Chandler asked.

  “That was a mystery. We never found their makeup.”

  “In fact, with the exception of the eyelash that was allegedly found and matched to victim number two, you can’t be one hundred percent sure that the makeup police did supposedly find in the apartment came from the victims, correct?”

  “This stuff is mass produced and sold around the world. So there is a lot of it out there, but I would guess that the chances of nine different exact combinations of makeup being found like that by mere coincidence are astronomical.”

  “I didn’t ask you to guess, Mr. Amado. Please answer the question I asked.”

  After flinching at being dressed down, Amado said, “The answer is we can’t be one hundred percent sure, that is correct.”

  “Okay, now tell the jury about the DNA testing you did that connected Norman Church to the eleven killings.”

  “There wasn’t any done. There-”

  “Just answer the question, Mr. Amado. What about serology tests, connecting Mr. Church to the crimes?”

  “There were none.”

  “Then it was the makeup comparison that was the clincher-the linchpin in the determination that Mr. Church was the Dollmaker?”

  “Well, it was for me. I don’t know about the detectives. My report said-”

  “I’m sure for the detectives it was the bullet that killed him that was the clincher.”

  “Objection,” Belk yelled angrily as he stood. “Your Honor, she can’t-”

  “Ms. Chandler,” Judge Keyes boomed. “I have warned you both about exactly this sort of thing. Why would you go and say something you know full well is prejudicial and out of order?”

  “I apologize, Your Honor.”

  “Well, it’s a little late for apologies. We’ll discuss this matter after the jury goes home for the day.”

  The judge then instructed the jurors to disregard her comment. But Bosch knew it had been a carefully thought out gambit by Chandler. The jurors would now see her even more as the underdog. Even the judge was against her-which he really wasn’t. And they might be distracted, thinking about what just happened, when Belk stepped up to repair Amado’s testimony.

  “Nothing further, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

  “Mr. Belk,” the judge said.

  Don’t say just a few questions again, Bosch thought as his lawyer moved to the lectern.

  “Just a few questions, Mr. Amado,” Belk said. “Plaintiff’s counsel mentioned DNA and serology tests and you said they had not been done. Why is that?”

  “Well, because there was nothing to test. No semen was ever recovered from any of the bodies. The killer had used a condom. Without samples to attempt to match to Mr. Church’s DNA or blood, there was not much point in running tests. We would have the victims’ but nothing to compare it to.”

  Belk drew a line with his pen through a question written on his pad.

  “If there was no recovery of semen or sperm, how do you know these women were raped or even had engaged in consensual sexual activity?”

  “The autopsies of all eleven of the victims showed vaginal bruising, much more than is considered usual or even possible from consensual sex. On two of the victims there was even tearing in the vaginal wall. The victims were brutally raped, in my estimation.”

  “But these women came from walks of life where sexual activity was common and frequent, even ‘rough sex’, if you will. Two of them performed in pornographic videos. How can you be sure they were sexually assaulted against their will?”

  “The bruising was such that it would have been very painful, especially for the two with vaginal tears. Hemorrhaging was considered perimortem, meaning at the time of death. The deputy coroners who performed these autopsies unanimously concluded these women were raped.”

  Belk drew another line on his pad, flipped the page and came up with a new question. He was doing well with Amado, Bosch thought. Better than Money had. It may have been a mistake for her to have called him as a witness.

  “How do you know that the killer used a condom?” Belk asked. “Couldn’t these women have been raped with an object and that account for the lack of semen?”

  “That could have happened and it could account for some of the damage. But there was clear evidence in five of the cases that they had had sex with a man wearing a condom.”

  “And what was that?”

  “We did rape kits. There was-”

  “Hold it a second, Mr. Amado. What is a rape kit?”

  “It’s a protocol for collecting evidence from bodies of people that may have been the victims of rape. In the case of a woman, we take vaginal and anal swabs, we comb the pubic area looking for foreign pubic hair, procedures such as that. We also take samples of blood and hair from the victim in case there is a call for comparison to evidence found on a suspect. It’s collected together in an evidence kit.”

  “Okay. Before I interrupted there, you were
going to tell us about the evidence found in five of the victims that was indicative of sex with a man who wore a condom.”

  “Yes, we did the rape kits each time we got a Dollmaker victim. And there was a foreign substance found in vaginal samplings in five of the victims. It was the same material in each of the women.”

  “What was it, Mr. Amado?”

  “It was identified as a condom lubricant.”

  “Was this material something that could be identified to a specific brand and style of condom?”

  Looking at Belk, Bosch could see the heavy man was chomping at the bit. Amado was answering each question slowly and each time Bosch could see that Belk could barely wait for the answer before plowing ahead with a new question. Belk was on a roll.

  “Yes,” Amado said. “We identified the product. It was from a Trojan-Enz lubricated condom with special receptacle end.”

  Looking at the court reporter, Amado said, “That’s spelled E-N-Z.”

  “And that was the same for all five samples received from the five bodies?” Belk asked.

  “Yes it was.”

  “I am going to ask you a hypothetical question. Assuming that the attacker of eleven women used the same brand of lubricated condom, how could you account for lubrication being found in the vaginal sampling of only five victims?”

  “I believe that a number of factors could be involved. Such as the intensity of the victim’s struggle. But essentially it would be just a matter of how much of the lubricant came off the condom and stayed in the vagina.”

  “When police officers brought you the various containers of makeup from the Hyperion apartment rented by Norman Church for analysis, did they bring anything else?”

  “Yes they did.”

  “What was that?”

  “A box of Trojan-Enz lubricated condoms with special receptacle ends.”

  “How many condoms did the box hold?”

  “Twelve separately packaged condoms.”

  “How many were still in the box when the police delivered it to you?”

  “There were three left.”

  “Nothing further.”

  Belk returned to the defense table with a triumphant spring in his walk.

  “A moment, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

  Bosch watched her open a fat file full of police documents. She leafed through the pages and took out a short stack of documents held together with a paper clip. She read the top one quickly and then held it up to leaf through the rest. Bosch could see the top one was the protocol list from a rape kit. She was reading the protocols from all eleven victims.

  Belk leaned over to him and whispered, “She’s about to step into some deep shit. I was going to bring this up later, during your testimony.”

  “Ms. Chandler?” the judge intoned.

  She jumped up.

  “Yes, Your Honor, I’m ready. I have a quick redirect of Mr. Amado.”

  She brought the stack of protocols with her to the lectern, read the last two and then looked at the coroner’s analyst.

  “Mr. Amado, you mentioned that part of the rape kit consisted of combing for foreign pubic hairs, do I have that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you explain that procedure a little more?”

  “Well, basically, the comb is passed through the pubic hair of the victim and it collects unattached hairs. Oftentimes, this unattached hair is from the victim’s attacker, or possibly other sexual partners.”

  “How’s it get there?”

  Amado’s face flushed to a crimson hue.

  “Well, uh, it-uh, during sex... there is I guess what you call friction between the bodies?”

  “I am asking the questions, Mr. Amado. You are answering.”

  There was quiet tittering from the gallery seats. Bosch felt embarrassed for Amado and thought that his own face might be turning red.

  “Yes, well, there is friction,” Amado said. “And this causes some transference. Loose pubic hair from one person can be transferred to that of the other.”

  “I see,” Chandler said. “Now, you as coordinator of the Dollmaker evidence from the coroner’s office were familiar with the rape kits of all eleven victims, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “With how many of the victims did the findings include foreign pubic hair?”

  Bosch understood what was happening now and realized that Belk was right. Chandler was walking into the buzz saw.

  “All of them,” Amado answered.

  Bosch saw Deborah Church raise her head and look sharply at Chandler at the lectern. Then she looked over at Bosch and their eyes met. She quickly looked away but Bosch knew. She, too, knew what was about to happen. Because she, too, knew her late husband the way Bosch had on that last night. She knew what he looked like naked.

  “Ah, all of them,” Chandler said. “Now, can you tell the jury how many of these pubic hairs found on these women were analyzed and identified as having been from the body of Norman Church?”

  “None of them were from Norman Church.”

  “Thank you.”

  Belk was up and moving to the lectern before Chandler had time to remove her pad and the rape kit protocols. Bosch watched her sit down and saw the widow Church lean to her and desperately begin whispering. Bosch saw Chandler’s eyes go dead. She held up her hand to tell the widow she had said enough and then leaned back and exhaled.

  “Now, let’s clear something up first,” Belk said. “Mr. Amado, you said you found pubic hairs on all of the eleven victims. Were these hairs all from the same man?”

  “No. We found a multitude of samples. In most cases, what looked like hair from possibly two or three men on each victim.”

  “What did you attribute this to?”

  “Their lifestyle. We knew these were women with multiple sexual partners.”

  “Did you analyze these samples to determine if there were common hairs? In other words, whether hair from one man was found on each of the victims.”

  “No, we did not. There was a huge amount of evidence collected in these cases and manpower dictated that we focus on evidence that would help identify a killer. Because we had so many different samples, it was determined that this was evidence that would be held and then used to link or clear a suspect, once that suspect was in custody.”

  “I see, well, then once Norman Church had been killed and was identified as the Dollmaker, did you then match any of the hairs from the victims to him?”

  “We did not.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because Mr. Church had shaved his body hair. There was no pubic hair to match.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  Chandler objected on the grounds that Amado could not answer for Church and the judge sustained it. But Bosch knew it didn’t matter. Everybody in the courtroom knew why Church had shaved himself-so he wouldn’t leave pubic hairs behind as evidence.

  Bosch looked at the jury and he saw two of the women writing in the notebooks the marshals had given them to help them keep track of important testimony. He wanted to buy Belk-and Amado-a beer.

  Chapter 7

  It looked like a cake in a box, one of those novelty things custom-made to look like Marilyn Monroe or something. The anthropologist had painted on a beige skin tone and red lipstick to go with blue eyes. It looked like frosting to Bosch. A wavy blonde wig was added. He stood in the squad room looking down at the plaster image, wondering if it really looked like anybody at all.

  “Five minutes till show time,” Edgar said.

  He was sitting in his chair, which was turned toward the TV on the file cabinets. He was holding the channel changer. His blue suit coat was hung neatly on a hanger, which was hooked on the coatrack at the end of the table. Bosch took his jacket off and hung it on one of the coatrack pegs. He checked his slot in the message box and sat down at his spot at the homicide table. There had been a call from Sylvia, nothing else important. He dialed her number as the Channel 4 news began.
He knew enough about the news priorities in this town to know the report on the concrete blonde wouldn’t be a lead story.

  “Harry, we’re gonna need that line clear once they show it,” Edgar said.

  “I’ll only be a minute. They won’t show it for a while. If they show it at all.”

  “They’ll show it. I made secret deals with all of them. They all think they’ll be getting the exclusive if we get an ID. They all want to get a boo-hoo story with the parents.”

  “You’re playing with fire, man. You make a promise like that and then they find out you fucked them around-”

  Sylvia picked up the phone.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “Hi, where are you?”

  “The office. We have to watch the phones a while. They’re putting the face of the victim from yesterday’s case on TV tonight.”

  “How was court?”

  “It’s the plaintiff’s case at the moment. But I think we scored a couple punches.”

  “I read theTimes today at lunch.”

  “Yeah, well, they got about half of it right.”

  “Are you coming out? Like you said.”

  “Well, eventually. Not right now. I’ve got to help answer phones on this and then it’s depending on what we get. If we’re skunked I’ll be out early.”

  He noticed he had lowered his voice so Edgar wouldn’t hear his conversation.

  “And if you get something good?”

  “We’ll see.”

  An indrawn breath, then silence. Harry waited.

  “You’ve been saying ‘we’ll see’ too much, Harry. We’ve talked about this. Sometimes-”

  “I know that.”

  “—I think that you just want to be left alone. Stay in your little house on the hill and keep the whole world out. Including me.”

  “Not you. You know that.”

  “Sometimes, I don’t. I don’t feel like I know it right now. You push me away just at the time when you need me-somebody-to be close.”

  He had no answer. He thought of her there on the other end. She was probably sitting on the stool in the kitchen. She had probably already begun making a dinner for both of them. Or maybe she was getting used to his ways and had waited for the call.