The Concrete Blonde

by Michael Connelly

  Earlier in the trial, the judge had determined that closing arguments would be no longer than a half hour for each side. This was to be divided, with the plaintiff—in the person of Chandler—arguing for twenty minutes followed by the defendant’s lawyer—Belk—delivering his entire thirty-minute argument. The plaintiff would then be allowed the last ten minutes. Chandler would have first and last word, another sign, Bosch believed, that the system was stacked against him.

  Bosch looked over at the plaintiff’s table and saw Deborah Church sitting there by herself, eyes focused straight ahead. The two daughters were in the first row of the gallery behind her. Chandler was not there but there were files and yellow pads laid out on the table. She was around.

  “You work on your speech,” he said to Belk. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Don’t be late coming back. Not again, please.”

  • • •

  As he had hoped, Chandler was outside smoking by the statue. She gave him a cold glance, said nothing and then took a few steps away from the ash can in order to ignore him. She had on her blue suit—it was probably her lucky suit—and the one tress of blonde hair was loose from the braid at the back of her neck.

  “Rehearsing?” Bosch asked.

  “I don’t need to rehearse. This is the easy part.”

  “I suppose.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose you’re freer from the constraints of law during the arguments. Not as many rules of what you can and can’t say. I think that’s when you’d be in your element.”

  “Very perceptive.”

  That was all she said. There was no indication that she knew her arrangement with Edgar had been discovered. Bosch had been counting on that when he rehearsed what he was going to say to her. After waking from his brief sleep, he had looked at the events of the night before with a fresh mind and eyes and had seen something that was missed before. It was now his intention to play her. He had thrown her the soft pitch. Now he had a curve.

  “When this is over,” he said, “I’d like the note.”

  “What note?”

  “The note the follower sent you.”

  A look of shock hit her face but was then quickly erased with the indifferent look she normally gave him. But she had not been quick enough. He had seen the look in her eyes, she sensed danger. He knew then he had her.

  “It’s evidence,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective Bosch. I need to get back inside.”

  She stubbed a half-smoked cigarette with a lipstick print on the butt into the ash can, then took two steps toward the door.

  “I know about Edgar. I saw you with him last night.”

  That stopped her. She turned around and looked at him.

  “The Hung Jury. A Bloody Mary at the bar.”

  She weighed her response and then said, “Whatever he told you, I’m sure it was designed to place him in the best light. I would be careful if you are planning to go public with it.”

  “I’m not going public with anything . . . unless you don’t give me the note. Withholding evidence of a crime is a crime in itself. But I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “Whatever Edgar told you about a note is a lie. I told him noth—”

  “And he told me nothing about a note. He didn’t need to. I figured it out. You called him Monday after the body was found because you already knew about it and knew it was connected to the Dollmaker. I wondered how, and then it was clear. We got a note but that was secret until the next day. The only one who found out was Bremmer but his story said you couldn’t be reached for comment. That was because you were out meeting Edgar. He said you called that afternoon asking about the body. You asked if we got a note. That was because you got a note, Counselor. And I need to see it. If it is different from the one we got, it could be helpful.”

  She looked at her watch and quickly lit another cigarette.

  “I can get a warrant,” he said.

  She laughed a fake sort of laugh.

  “I’d like to see you get a warrant. I’d like to see the judge in this town who would sign a warrant allowing the LAPD to search my house with this case in the papers every day. Judges are political animals, Detective, nobody’s going to sign a warrant and then possibly come out on the wrong end of this.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of your office. But thanks for at least telling me where it is.”

  The look came back into her face for a split second. She had slipped and maybe that was as big a shock to her as anything he had said. She put the cigarette into the sand after two puffs. Tommy Faraway would cherish it when he found it later.

  “We convene in one minute. Detective, I don’t know anything about a note. Understand? Nothing at all. There is no note. If you try to make any trouble over this, I will make even more for you.”

  “I haven’t told Belk and I’m not going to. I just want the note. It’s got nothing to do with the case at trial.”

  “That’s easy for . . .”

  “For me to say because I haven’t read it? You’re slipping, Counselor. Better be more careful than that.”

  She ignored that and went on to other business.

  “Another thing, if you think my. . . uh, arrangement with Edgar is grounds for a mistrial motion or a misconduct complaint, you will find that you are dead wrong. Edgar agreed to our relationship without any provocation. He suggested it, in fact. If you make any complaint I will sue you for slander and send out press releases when I do it.”

  He doubted anything that happened was at Edgar’s suggestion but let it go. She gave him her best dead-eyed, killer look, then opened the door and disappeared through it.

  Bosch finished his smoke, hoping his play might at least knock her off speed a little bit during her closing argument. But most of all he was pleased that he had gotten tacit confirmation of his theory. The follower had sent her a note.

  • • •

  The silence that descended over the courtroom as Chandler walked to the lectern was the kind of tension-filled quiet that accompanies the moment before a verdict is read. Bosch felt that this was because the verdict was a foregone conclusion in many of the minds in the courtroom and Chandler’s words here would serve as his coup de grâce. The final, deadly blow.

  She began with the perfunctory thank-yous to the jury for their patience and close attention to the case. She said she was fully confident that they would fairly deliberate a verdict.

  In the trials Bosch had attended as an investigator, this was always stated by both lawyers to the jury, and he always thought it was a crock. Most juries have members who are there simply to avoid going to work at the factory or office. But once there, the issues are either too complicated or scary or boring and they spend their days in the box just trying to stay awake between the breaks, when they can fortify themselves with sugar, caffeine and nicotine.

  After that opening salutation, Chandler quickly got to the heart of the matter. She said, “You will recall that on Monday I stood before you and gave you the road map. I told you what I would set out to prove, what I needed to prove and now it is your job to decide if I have done that. I think when you consider the week’s testimony, you will have no doubt that I have.

  “And speaking of doubt, the judge will instruct you but I would like to take a moment to explain to you once again that this is a civil matter. It is not a criminal case. It is not like Perry Mason or like anything else you have seen on TV or at the movies. In a civil trial, in order for you to find for the plaintiff, it requires only that a preponderance of the evidence be in favor of the plaintiff’s case. A preponderance, what does that mean? It means the evidence for the plaintiff’s case outweighs the evidence against it. A majority. It can be a simple majority, just fifty percent, plus one.”

  She spent a lot of time on this subject because this would be where the case was won or lost. She had to take twelve legally inept people—this was gu
aranteed by the juror selection process—and relieve them of media-conditioned beliefs or perceptions that cases were decided by reasonable doubts or beyond the shadow of doubt. That was for criminal cases. This was civil. In civil, the defendant lost the edge he got in criminal.

  “Think of it as a set of scales. The scales of justice. And each piece of evidence or testimony introduced has a certain weight, depending on the validity you give it. One side of the scales is the plaintiff’s case and the other, the defendant’s. I think that when you have gone into the jury room to deliberate and have properly weighed the evidence of the case, there will be no doubt that the scales are tipped in the plaintiff’s favor. If you find that is indeed the case, then you must find for Mrs. Church.”

  With the preliminaries out of the way, Bosch knew that she now had to finesse the rest, because the plaintiff was essentially presenting a two-part case, hoping to win at least one of them. One being that maybe Norman Church was the Dollmaker, a monstrous serial killer, but even if so, Bosch’s actions behind the badge were equally heinous and should not be forgiven. The second part, the one that would surely bring untold riches if the jury bought it, was that Norman Church was an innocent and that Bosch had cut him down in cold blood, depriving his family of a loving husband and father.

  “The evidence presented this week points to two possible findings by you,” Chandler told the jury. “And this will be the most difficult task you have, to determine the level of Detective Bosch’s culpability. Without a doubt it is clear that he acted rashly, recklessly and with wanton disregard for life and safety on the night Norman Church was killed. His actions were inexcusable and a man paid for it with his life. A family paid for it with its husband and father.

  “But you must look beyond that at the man who was killed. The evidence—from the videotape that is a clear alibi for one killing attributed to Norman Church, if not all of them, to the testimony of loved ones—should convince you that the police had the wrong man. If not, then Detective Bosch’s own acknowledgments on the witness stand make it clear that the killings did not stop, that he killed the wrong man.

  Bosch saw that Belk was scribbling on his pad. Hopefully, he was making note of all the things about Bosch’s testimony and others that Chandler was conveniently leaving out of her argument.

  “Lastly,” she was saying, “you must look beyond the man who was killed and look at the killer.”

  Killer, Bosch thought. It sounded so awful when applied to him. He said the word over and over in his mind. Yes, he had killed. He had killed before and after Church, yet being called simply a killer without the explanations attached somehow seemed horrible. In that moment he realized that he did care after all. Despite what he had said earlier to Belk, he wanted the jury to sanction what he had done. He needed to be told he had done the right thing.

  “You have a man,” she said, “who has repeatedly shown the taste for blood. A cowboy who killed before and since the episode with the unarmed Mr. Church. A man who shoots first and looks for evidence later. You have a man with a deep-seated motive for killing a man who he thought might be a serial killer of women, of women from the street . . . like his own mother.”

  She let that float out there for a while as she pretended to be checking a point or two in the notes on her pad.

  “When you go back into that room, you will have to decide if this is the kind of police officer you want in your city. The police force is supposed to mirror the society it protects. Its officers should exemplify the best in us. Ask yourself while you deliberate, who does Harry Bosch exemplify? What segment of our society does he present the mirror image of? If the answers to those questions don’t trouble you, then return with a verdict in the defendant’s favor. If they do trouble you, if you think our society deserves better than the cold-blooded killing of a potential suspect, then you have no choice but to return a verdict finding for the plaintiff.”

  Chandler paused here to go to the plaintiff’s table and pour a glass of water. Belk leaned close to Bosch and whispered, “Not bad but I’ve seen her do better. . . . I’ve also seen her do worse.”

  “The time she did worse,” Bosch whispered back, “did she win?”

  Belk looked down at his pad, making the answer clear. As Chandler was returning to the lectern he leaned back to Bosch.

  “This is her routine. Now she’ll talk about money. After getting the water, Money always talks about money.”

  Chandler cleared her throat and began again.

  “You twelve people are in a rare position. You have the ability to make societal change. Not many people ever get that chance. If you feel Detective Bosch was wrong, to whatever degree, and find for the plaintiff, you will be making change because you will be sending a clear signal, a message to every police officer in this city. From the chief and the administrators inside Parker Center two blocks from here to every rookie patrol officer on the street, the message will be that we do not want you to act this way. We will not accept it. Now, if you return such a verdict you must also set monetary damages. This is not a complicated task. The complicated part is the first part, deciding whether Detective Bosch was right or wrong. The damages can be anything, from one dollar to one million dollars or more. It doesn’t matter. What is important is the message. For with the message, you will bring justice for Norman Church. You will bring justice to his family.”

  Bosch looked around behind himself and saw Bremmer in the gallery with the other reporters. Bremmer smiled slyly and Bosch turned back around. The reporter had been right on the money about Money.

  Chandler walked back to the plaintiff’s table, picked up a book and took it back to the lectern. It was old and without a dust jacket, its green cloth binding cracking. Bosch thought he could see a mark, probably a library stamp, on the top edge of its pages.

  “In closing now,” she said, “I would like to address a concern you might have. I know it is one I might have if I were in your place. And that is, how is it that we have come to have men like Detective Bosch as our police? Well, I don’t think we can hope to answer that and it is not at point in this case. But if you recall, I quoted to you the philosopher Nietzsche at the beginning of the week. I read his words about the black place he called the abyss. To paraphrase him, he said we must take care that whoever fights monsters for us does not also become a monster. In today’s society it is not hard to accept that there are monsters out there, many of them. And so it is not hard, then, to believe that a police officer could become a monster himself.

  “After we finished here yesterday, I spent the evening at the library.”

  She glanced over at Bosch as she said this, flaunting the lie. He stared back at her and refused the impulse to look away.

  “And I’d like to finish by reading something I found that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about the same subject we are dealing with today. That chasm of darkness where it can be easy for a person to cross over to the wrong side. In his book The Marble Faun, Hawthorne wrote, ‘The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of blackness that lies beneath us . . . everywhere.’

  “Ladies and gentlemen, be careful in your deliberations and be true to yourselves. Thank you.”

  It was so quiet that Bosch could hear her heels on the rug as she walked back to her seat.

  “Folks,” Judge Keyes said, “we’re gonna take a fifteen minute break and then Mr. Belk gets his turn.”

  As they were standing for the jury, Belk whispered, “I can’t believe she used the word orifice in her closing argument.”

  Bosch looked at him. Belk seemed gleeful but Bosch recognized that he was just latching on to something, anything, so that he could pump himself up and get ready for his own turn behind the lectern. For Bosch knew that whatever words Chandler had used, she had been awfully good. Appraising the sweating fat man next to him, he felt not one bit of confidence.

  Bosch went out to the justice statue and smoked two cigarettes during the break but Honey Chandler never came out. Tommy Farawa
y swung by, however, and clicked his tongue approvingly when he found the nearly whole cigarette she had put in the ash can before. He moved on without saying anything else. It occurred to Bosch that he had never seen Tommy Faraway smoke one of the stubs he culled from the sand.

  • • •

  Belk surprised Bosch with his closing. It wasn’t half bad. It was just that he wasn’t in the same league as Chandler. His closing was more a reaction to Chandler’s than a stand-alone treatise on Bosch’s innocence and the unfairness of the accusations against him. He said things like, “In all of Ms. Chandler’s talk about the two possible findings you can come up with, she completely forgot about a third, that being that Detective Bosch acted properly and wisely. Correctly.”

  It scored points for the defense but it was also a backhanded confirmation by the defense that there were two possible findings for the plaintiff. Belk did not see this but Bosch did. The assistant city attorney was giving the jury three choices now, instead of two, and still only one choice absolved Bosch. At times he wanted to pull Belk back to the table and rewrite his script. But he couldn’t. He had to hunker down as he had in the tunnels of Vietnam when the bombs would be hitting above ground, and hope that there were no cave-ins.

  The middle of Belk’s argument was largely centered on the evidence linking Church to the nine murders. He repeatedly hammered home that Church was the monster in this story, not Bosch, and the evidence clearly backed that up. He warned the jurors that the fact that similar murders apparently continued was unrelated to what Church had done and how Bosch reacted in the apartment on Hyperion.

  He finally hit what Bosch figured to be his stride near the end. An inflection of true anger entered his voice when he criticized Chandler’s description of Bosch as having acted recklessly and with wanton disregard for life.

  “The truth is that life was all Detective Bosch had on his mind when he went through that door. His actions were predicated on the belief that another woman, another victim, was there. Detective Bosch had only one choice. That was to go through that door, secure the situation and deal with the consequences. Norman Church was killed when he refused repeated orders from a police officer and made the move to the pillow. It was a hand he dealt, not Bosch, and he paid the ultimate price.