Michael Connelly (106 page)

“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.

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.

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.