Switchblade

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch could not have asked for a better result. Blood from both the victim and the suspect were found on the murder weapon. It looked like a slam dunk. Bosch took what he had to the District Attorney’s Office to request that a murder charge be lodged against Sewell. He spoke with a deputy DA named Lionel Dupree, who was in the pool of prosecutors assigned to cold cases because of the unique challenges they posed at trial. The Lion, as Dupree was called by the cops in OU, did not call it a slam dunk.

  “It’s not even a layup,” he told Bosch. “Science can be challenged—how was that switchblade stored? how many people had access to it over twenty years? what about the deterioration of the specimen while it was in the sink?—and don’t get me started on test contamination up at DOJ. You get a good lawyer and there could be a hundred challenges to this, Harry. And believe me, when it comes to murder cases with death-penalty risk, they’re all good lawyers.”

  “So you’re not going to file?” Bosch said incredulously. “I thought you were ‘the Lion’—not afraid of any case.”

  “No, I didn’t say I won’t file. And I’m not afraid of this or any other case. I just want to be bulletproof when we go into court. I want more than DNA.”

  “So what do I do? The case is old. This is what I’ve got.”

  “First of all, you go up to the Q and see this guy, see if you can get an admission. And second—and this is the big one—find the witness.”

  “What witness?”

  “Whoever it was who called in and put this guy’s name on this. They have to have seen or heard something. They gave Sewell’s name and they were right. Find me that caller and then we probably have a slam dunk here.”

  Bosch nodded reluctantly. He knew the Lion was right when it came to making cases but sometimes you had what you had and you needed to roll the dice. He left the DA’s Office disappointed and knowing the case might stall out. For Dupree, as long as Sewell was in prison on the other killing, it didn’t make sense to move ahead with a risky prosecution.

  One week after Bosch met with Lionel Dupree he was sitting in a visiting room in the Adjustment Center at the California State Prison at San Quentin. The AC was so named in the nineteenth century because it was the building where new inmates were oriented to the prison’s rules and routines, and it was now also where law enforcement interviews took place. Patrick Sewell was taken from his job in the prison’s mattress factory and brought to Bosch for the interview. Bosch had had a long time to consider how he would play the inmate and had even written out a script which he’d edited and then committed to memory.

  Sewell was surprisingly small for a killer of men. Bosch had his file on the table in front of him and knew he was exactly five foot six and 130 pounds. He had brown hair and glasses and had a thin smile on his face. It was a phony sort of smile designed to cloak true intentions. He wore a baggy blue shirt and pants, the color status meaning he had achieved a level of trust inside the prison that allowed him certain freedoms within its twenty-five-foot stone walls. It also meant that he was on a pathway toward parole. Bosch’s script would play on that.

  “Patrick, I’m Detective Harry Bosch from the Los Angeles Police Department. How are you doing today?”

  Sewell paused before speaking. He presumably had no idea what Bosch was there for.

  “I’m doing okay,” he finally said.

  “Good. How are you set for your parole hearing next month?”

  Sewell shrugged.

  “I’m ready, I guess.”

  “The captain tells me you’ve been a model prisoner. You must want to get out very badly.”

  “I don’t think there’s anybody who wants to be here.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “That’s true, Patrick. You know if they turn you down, you don’t get another shot for two years. Then if they turn you down again, it’s four years. Best chance is the first shot.”

  “What do you want, Mr. LAPD?”

  “What I want is to ask you about some years and some specific dates and to see if you can remember where you were and what you might’ve seen during those times.”

  “What if I don’t want to answer?”

  “You don’t have to. But here’s the trick. If you don’t answer me, that’s called being uncooperative. And that’s going to go in your jacket, and those three parole board members next month are going to know it. Not sure you want that, since I see you got fifteen years in already.”

  “Sixteen.”

  “My mistake. Sixteen.”

  “What dates are you talking about?”

  “Well, first let’s do this right.”

  Bosch reached into his suit pocket to retrieve his mini voice recorder. He put it down on the table between them and turned it on. He then identified himself and Sewell as well as their location and the date of the recording. Then, reading from a card he had also pulled from a pocket, he gave Sewell the Miranda warning, notifying him of his right to an attorney during the questioning that was to follow. Sewell, wanting to be cooperative, waived his rights and agreed to answer questions. Bosch went right to the script he had committed to memory.

  “Mr. Sewell, have you ever been in Los Angeles?”

  “Of course. Many times.”

  “Did you ever live there?”

  “Not really. I stayed with friends every now and then but I never paid rent or anything like that.”

  “When were the times you stayed with friends?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to remember after so many years. It was on and off.”

  “Was it near the time of your arrest and incarceration in 1996?”

  “It could’ve been. I don’t remember.”

  “What about before that, earlier in the nineties?”

  “I’m sure I was there. In and out.”

  “Did you know an individual named William Ratliff? He was known as Billy by his friends.”

  “Who now?”

  “William Ratliff. He went by Billy.”

  “No, I didn’t know anybody who went by Billy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Where’d you live in 1992?”

  “’Ninety-two? That’s way back. In ’92 I was still living part of the time in my mother’s place in Tustin.”

  “What about the other part of the time?”

  “Uh, you know, around. I’d stay with friends. You know, in and out.”

  “When would you go to Los Angeles?”

  “Los Angeles? Like on weekends every now and then.”

  “Did you drive up there?”

  “Yeah, I had a car.”

  “So you were in Los Angeles in 1992?”

  “I don’t remember exactly. It’s a long—”

  “Ever in Hollywood?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I’ve read your application for parole.”

  “You’re allowed to do that?”

  “Yes, Patrick, the department of probation and parole allowed me to see it. And I see in the candidate’s comments section that you take full responsibility for the crime that put you up here.”

  “Yes. I told them I’m sorry.”

  “So you are admitting you did it? At your trial you denied it all the way.”

  Bosch was drawing Sewell into a corner. In order to get paroled, he had to acknowledge his crimes and hope that his confession would be seen by the board as part of his rehabilitation and redemption.

  “I am admitting that I had poor self-control and that I acted out. It cost an innocent man his life and for that I am very sorry.”

  “Where did you buy the switchblade you killed that innocent man with?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said. Where did you buy the switchblade? You killed the victim in ’96 with a switchblade. Daniel Hunter, a gay man you picked up in a bar. You went to his apartment and stabbed him repeatedly with a switchblade and you admitted as much in your application for parole.”

&n
bsp; Bosch paused. Sewell didn’t say anything.

  “Now, I want to know where you got the switchblade, Patrick. You told me you were cooperating here.”

  The pause continued. Sewell eyes stared cold and hard at Bosch because he knew it was one thing that could not be recorded on Bosch’s micro-recorder and used against him.

  “In TJ,” he finally said. “They sold them there cheap.”

  “Tijuana,” Bosch said. “Did you go there a lot?”

  “Not too much. When I got the urge.”

  “The urge to travel or the urge to buy a switchblade?”

  “The urge for authentic Mexican food.”

  “When did you buy the knife?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you buy more than one down there, Patrick?”

  “Just the one, as far as I remember.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Did you stab Billy Ratliff with a switchblade you bought in Mexico?”

  “No, don’t be crazy. The answer is no.”

  “Were you in Los Angeles on February 9, 1992?”

  “How am I supposed to remember something like that?”

  “Yes or no?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  “There is a witness who tells us you killed Billy Ratliff.”

  “That is bullshit!”

  “No, he says you killed him. You stabbed him with a switchblade just like you stabbed Daniel Hunter. Both of them gay, both of them stabbed with a cheap switchblade from Tijuana. It was you.”

  “No, you’re wrong and you can’t prove a thing. What witness? There was no witness.”

  “Yeah, how do you know there was no witness?”

  Sewell realized he was skirting too close to an admission.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re trying to pin this on me because I got a parole hearing coming up. I’m trying to cooperate but you’re accusing me and there isn’t one shred of evidence against me.”

  “Depends on what you consider a shred.”

  The convict stared at Bosch for a long moment.

  “And what’s that mean?”

  “It means the smallest shred in the world connects you to Ratliff. We’ve got DNA. On the murder weapon. You stabbed him so hard your fingers slipped over the hilt and you cut yourself. Just like with Hunter.”

  Sewell shook his head.

  “You are lying. I wasn’t even there.”

  “The science doesn’t lie. You can forget parole, Sewell. You can forget everything. This time we’re going for the death penalty. You want to save yourself from that, then you talk. You tell everything. You’ll never get out of here but you’ll be alive.”

  “Fuck you, liar. You wouldn’t even be here if you had a case. I’m out of here.”

  He stood up and started calling for the guard.

  Before Bosch left the Adjustment Center, he got the names of every prisoner who had ever shared a cell with Sewell. He figured the tip to the sorter had to have come from someone he had bragged to about his crimes. Bosch would start with the cell mates.

  The next month, Sewell was denied parole after the three-member board heard a presentation from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office that included graphic details of the murder of Daniel Hunter and also news that Sewell’s DNA had been linked to a homicide being worked as a cold case in Los Angeles.

  The denial meant Sewell would remain safely behind prison walls for at least the next two years. This took some of the urgency off Bosch but he still worked the case as a hobby, slowly making his way down the list of forty-one cell mates Sewell had had over his years at San Quentin. Some were dead but most were incarcerated in other prisons and jails, which made them easy to get to. Bosch sometimes piggybacked interviews with them while conducting interviews on other cases that came and went.

  Ten months passed before Bosch checked the last name off the list. He had found no one who made the call to the Open-Unsolved Unit’s public line. He visited the Lion at the DA’s Office to try to persuade him to go ahead with the case, even though DNA would be the only hard evidence. He argued that the circumstantial evidence—the similarities between the Hunter and Ratliff murders, Sewell’s evasiveness during the San Quentin interview—would help win the day in court, but Dupree was unmoved. He stuck to the argument that as long as Sewell was in prison, there was no need to mount a potentially risky and costly prosecution. He fortified this with the fact that Sewell’s first parole request had been denied, an indicator he was not going anywhere, and the hope that the longer they waited the better the chance that the anonymous caller might come to light.

  On a slow day at the start of the new year, Bosch took a ride down to Santa Ana and the Orange County DA’s Office. He asked to see Ken McDowell, the deputy DA who prosecuted Sewell back in 1996. The two men had never spoken in person, though McDowell was aware of Bosch’s efforts and had been the prosecutor who appeared at Sewell’s first parole hearing to urge that he not be released.

  Bosch explained to McDowell where the case was and why it was stalled.

  “I’m grasping at straws here,” Bosch said.

  McDowell, who was now the head deputy DA, shook his head and said he couldn’t help Bosch.

  “It’s weird, though,” he said. “Our case started the same way.”

  “What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

  “Anonymous tip. Somebody—it was a woman—called the OC sheriff’s tip line and said the guy we’re looking for in that Irvine stabbing was Patrick Sewell. We took it from there, but we never did find out who the lady was who made the call.”

  Bosch had not seen that in the abbreviated records he had received from Orange County at the start of his investigation. He asked McDowell if he could look at the full file on the case, and the prosecutor allowed him permission as long as he didn’t remove any records from the office. Bosch made the deal and spent the afternoon in an unused and windowless conference room looking through two cardboard file boxes.

  Near the back of the second box was a copy of the presentencing report prepared on Sewell before he was sentenced for the murder of Daniel Hunter. Bosch learned many details about Sewell’s life that he’d been unaware of. He learned that when Sewell was a child, his father had abandoned the family after revealing that he was homosexual. He also learned that as an adult Sewell had had his own troubled marriage.

  On the second Friday in February, Bosch invited Emily Robertson for lunch at Pete’s Café, a restaurant heavily favored by police and civilians who worked out of the nearby Police Administration Building. They engaged in simple conversation on the short walk over from the PAB. It was only after they were seated at the restaurant and Bosch looked over the lunch specials that he realized it was Valentine’s Day.

  He became flustered, thinking that Emily would get the wrong idea. She was at least twenty years younger, and even the idea of a relationship seemed inappropriate. Bosch thought maybe people in the restaurant would think she was his daughter or his secretary. Either way it didn’t matter. What was important was that Emily not misunderstand.

  “Emily, I know it’s Valentine’s Day but that’s not why I asked you to lunch.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I asked you because I wanted to talk to you about work-related things.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, actually, one thing. One case. Patrick Sewell.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Are they going to prosecute?”

  “Uh, that hasn’t been decided. Take a look at this.”

  From his inside suit coat pocket Bosch withdrew a folded document. He flattened it on the table and slid it over for her to see. She looked at it but seemed confused.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “It’s a marriage license,” Bosch said. “Your marriage license from 1995, when you married Patrick Sewell.”

  Emily bowed her head.

  “I don’t want to cause you any more
upset than is necessary, Emily,” Bosch said quickly. “But I need to know what’s going on.”

  He waited. She said nothing. She didn’t look up at him.

  “You married Patrick Sewell in ’95 and divorced him eight months later in ’96—the same year he killed Daniel Hunter. He was arrested in ’96 after an anonymous caller —a woman—put detectives onto him. That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Emily nodded without looking up.

  “Two years ago, when you brought me the green file with the tip about Sewell and the Billy Ratliff murder, that was you again.”

  “Yes.”

  The voice was weak, the head still down.

  “Emily, look at me. Please.”

  She finally looked up at him. Her eyes were filled with tears, threatening the carefully drawn eyeliner. Bosch felt that they were attracting stares from the other Valentine’s Day couples in the restaurant but he didn’t care.

  “There was no anonymous call to Open-Unsolved,” he said. “You made that up.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why then? Why did you wait so long?”

  “He was going to come up for parole. I had to try to do something.”

  She explained that after she and Sewell got married, she learned very quickly that he was mentally imbalanced and carried a deep-seated rage over his father’s abandonment and the reasons behind it. He told Emily that growing up, there were times when the rage overcame him and he acted out. In one emotional moment he spoke of killing a homosexual teenager named Billy in Hollywood.

  Emily never got any more details about the supposed murder. Years later, at the same time she began to worry that Sewell would be set free through parole, she saw a newspaper story about the success of the Open-Unsolved Unit and the department’s plan to hire a civilian to help deal with the massive number of inquiries that came in each year.

  “I thought it would give me access to the records and I would be able to look for the case,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” Bosch said. “Why didn’t you just call in the tip like you did before in Orange County? Why change careers? Why go at it by yourself?”

  “Because I wanted to. I had to do it myself to make up for not saying anything for so long. I guess I was afraid of him, even in prison. I still am. He knew I had made the call before. He sent me a letter from prison saying he knew.”