Bosch looked up from the photos to Rachel’s eyes.
“You think he did this before.”
“I think the idea that he had acted out before in this way is compelling. It would not surprise me if you were to find that he was involved in other abductions.”
“You’re talking about more than twenty-four years ago.”
“I know. And since there was no linking of Jessup to known unsolved murders, we are probably talking about missing children and runaways. Cases where there was never a crime scene established. The girls were never found.”
Bosch thought of Jessup’s middle-of-the-night visits to the parks along Mulholland Drive. He thought he might now know why Jessup would light a candle at the base of a tree.
Then a more stunning and scary thought pushed through.
“Do you think a guy like this would use those crimes from so long ago to feed his fantasy now?”
“Of course he would. He’s been in prison, what other choice did he have?”
Bosch felt an urgency take hold inside. An urgency that came with the growing certainty that they weren’t dealing with an isolated instance of murder. If Walling’s theory was correct, and he had no reason to doubt it, Jessup was a repeater. And though he had been on ice for twenty-four years, he was now roaming the city freely. It would not be long now before he became vulnerable to the pressures and urges that had driven him to deadly action before.
Bosch came to a fast resolve. The next time Jessup was seized by the pressures of his life and overcome by the compulsion to kill, Bosch was going to be there to destroy him.
His eyes refocused and he realized Rachel was looking at him oddly.
“Thank you for all of this, Rachel,” he said. “I think I need to go.”
Nineteen
Thursday, March 4, 9 A.M.
It was only a hearing on pretrial motions but the courtroom was packed. Lots of courthouse gadflies and media, and a fair number of trial lawyers were sitting in as well. I sat at the prosecution table with Maggie and we were going over our arguments once again. All issues before Judge Breitman had already been argued and submitted on paper. This would be when the judge could ask further questions and then announce her rulings. I had a growing sense of anxiety. The motions submitted by Clive Royce were all pretty routine and Maggie and I had submitted solid responses. We were also ready with oral arguments to back them, but a hearing like this was also a time for the unexpected. On more than one occasion I had sandbagged the prosecution in a pretrial hearing. And sometimes the case is won or lost before the trial begins with a ruling in one of these hearings.
I leaned back and looked behind us and then took a quick glance around the courtroom. I gave a phony smile and nod to a lawyer I saw in the spectator section, then turned back to Maggie.
“Where’s Bosch?” I asked.
“I don’t think he’s going to be here.”
“Why not? He’s completely disappeared in the last week.”
“He’s been working on something. He called yesterday and asked if he had to be here for this and I said he didn’t.”
“He’d better be working on something related to Jessup.”
“He tells me it is and that he’s going to bring it to us soon.”
“That’s nice of him. The trial starts in four weeks.”
I wondered why Bosch had chosen to call her instead of me, the lead prosecutor. I realized that this made me upset with Maggie as well as Bosch.
“Listen, I don’t know what happened between you two on your little trip to Port Townsend, but he should be calling me.”
Maggie shook her head as if dealing with a petulant child.
“Look, you don’t have to worry. He knows you’re the lead prosecutor. He probably figures you are too busy for the day-to-day updates on what he’s doing. And I’m going to forget what you said about Port Townsend. This one time. You make another insinuation like that and you and I are going to have a real problem.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
My attention was drawn across the aisle to Jessup, who was sitting at the defense table with Royce. He was staring at me with a smirk on his face and I realized he had been watching Maggie and me, maybe even listening.
“Excuse me a second,” I said.
I got up and walked over to the defense table. I leaned over him.
“Can I help you with something, Jessup?”
Before Jessup could say a word his lawyer cut in.
“Don’t talk to my client, Mick,” Royce said. “If you want to ask him something, then you ask me.”
Now Jessup smiled again, emboldened by his attorney’s defensive move.
“Just go sit down,” Jessup said. “I got nothing to say to you.”
Royce held his hand up to quiet him.
“I’ll handle this. You be quiet.”
“He threatened me. You should complain to the judge.”
“I said be quiet and that I would handle this.”
Jessup folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.
“Mick, is there a problem here?” Royce asked.
“No, no problem. I just don’t like him staring at me.”
I walked back to the prosecution table, annoyed with myself for losing my calm. I sat down and looked at the pool camera set up in the jury box. Judge Breitman had approved the filming of the trial and the various hearings leading up to it, but only through the use of a pool camera, which would provide a universal feed that all channels and networks could use.
A few minutes later the judge took the bench and called the hearing to order. One by one we went through the defense motions, and the rulings mostly fell our way without much further argument. The most important one was the routine motion to dismiss for lack of evidence, which the judge rejected with little comment. When Royce asked to be heard, she said that it wasn’t necessary to discuss the issue further. It was a solid rebuke and I loved it even though outwardly I acted as though it were routine and boring.
The only ruling the judge wanted to discuss in detail was the oddball request by Royce to allow his client to use makeup during trial to cover the tattoos on his neck and fingers. Royce had argued in his motion that the tattoos were all prison tattoos applied while he was falsely incarcerated for twenty-four years. He said the tattoos could be prejudicial when noticed by jurors. His client intended to cover these with skin-tone makeup and he wanted to bar the prosecution from addressing it in front of the jury.
“I have to admit I have not had a motion like this come before me,” the judge said. “I’m inclined to allow it and hold the prosecution from drawing attention to it but I see the prosecution has objected to the motion, saying that it contains insufficient information about the content and history of these tattoos. Can you shed some light on the subject, Mr. Royce?”
Royce stood and addressed the court from his place at the defense table. I looked over and my eyes were drawn to Jessup’s hands. I knew the tattoos across his knuckles were Royce’s chief concern. The neck markings could largely be covered with a collared shirt, which he would wear with a suit at trial. But the hands were difficult to hide. Across the four digits of each hand he had inked the sentiment FUCK THIS and Royce knew that I would make sure it was seen by jurors. That sentiment was probably the chief impediment to having Jessup testify in his defense, because Royce knew I would find a way either casually or specifically to make sure the jury got his message.
“Your Honor, it is the defense’s position that these tattoos were administered to Mr. Jessup’s body while he was falsely imprisoned and are a product of that harrowing experience. Prison is a dangerous place, Judge, and inmates take measures to protect themselves. Sometimes it is through tattooing that is designed to be intimidating or to show an association the prisoner might not actually have or believe in. It would certainly be prejudicial for the jury to see, and therefore we ask for relief. This, I might add, is merely a tactic by the prosecution to delay the trial, and t
he defense firmly stands by its decision to not delay justice in this case.”
Maggie stood up quickly. She had handled this motion on paper and therefore it was hers to handle in court.
“Your Honor, may I be heard on the defense’s accusation?”
“One moment, Ms. McPherson, I want to be heard myself. Mr. Royce, can you explain your last statement?”
Royce bowed politely.
“Yes, of course, Judge Breitman. The defendant has begun to go through a tattoo removal process. But this takes time and will not be completed by trial. By objecting to our simple request to use makeup, the prosecution is trying to push the trial back until this removal process is completed. It’s an effort to subvert the speedy trial statute which since day one the defense, to the prosecution’s consternation, has refused to waive.”
The judge turned her gaze to Maggie McFierce. It was her turn.
“Your Honor, this is simply a defense fabrication. The state has not once asked for a delay or opposed the defense’s request for a speedy trial. In fact, the prosecution is ready for trial. So this statement is outlandish and objectionable. The true objection on the part of the prosecution to this motion is to the idea of the defendant being allowed to disguise himself. A trial is a search for truth, and allowing him to use makeup to cover up who he really is would be an affront to the search for truth. Thank you, Your Honor.”
“Judge, may I respond?” Royce, still standing, said immediately.
Breitman paused for a moment while she wrote a few notes from Maggie’s brief.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Royce,” she finally said. “I’m going to make a ruling on this and I will allow Mr. Jessup to cover his tattoos. If he chooses to testify on his behalf, the prosecution will not address this issue with him in front of the jury.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Maggie said.
She sat down without showing any outward sign of disappointment. It was just one ruling among many others and most had gone the prosecution’s way. This loss was minor at worst.
“Okay,” the judge said. “I think we have covered everything. Anything else from counsel at this time?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Royce said as he stood again. “Defense has a new motion we would like to submit.”
He stepped away from the defense table and brought copies of the new motion first to the judge and then to us, giving Maggie and me individual copies of a one-page motion. Maggie was a fast reader, a skill she had genetically passed on to our daughter, who was reading two books a week on top of her homework.
“This is bullshit,” she whispered before I had even finished reading the title of the document.
But I caught up quickly. Royce was adding a new lawyer to the defense team and the motion was to disqualify Maggie from the prosecution because of a conflict of interest. The new lawyer’s name was David Bell.
Maggie quickly turned around to scan the spectator seats. My eyes followed and there was David Bell, sitting at the end of the second row. I knew him on sight because I had seen him with Maggie in the months after our marriage had ended. One time I had come to her apartment to pick up my daughter and Bell had opened the door.
Maggie turned back and started to stand to address the court but I put my hand on her shoulder and held her in place.
“I’m taking this,” I said.
“No, wait,” she whispered urgently. “Ask for a ten-minute recess. We need to talk about this.”
“Exactly what I was going to do.”
I stood and addressed the judge.
“Your Honor, like you, we just got this. We can take it with us and submit but we would rather argue it right now. If the court could indulge us with a brief recess, I think we would be ready to respond.”
“Fifteen minutes, Mr. Haller? I have another matter holding. I could handle it and come back to you.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.”
This meant we had to leave the table while another prosecutor handled his business before the judge. We pushed our files and Maggie’s laptop to the back of the table to make room, then got up and walked toward the back door of the courtroom. As we passed Bell he raised a hand to get Maggie’s attention but she ignored him and walked by.
“You want to go upstairs?” Maggie asked as we came through the double doors. She was suggesting that we go up to the DA’s office.
“There isn’t time to wait for an elevator.”
“We could take the stairs. It’s only three flights.”
We walked through the door into the building’s enclosed stairwell but then I grabbed her arm.
“This is good enough right here,” I said. “Tell me what we do about Bell.”
“That piece of shit. He’s never defended a criminal case, let alone a murder, in his life.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t have made the same mistake twice.”
She looked pointedly at me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind, bad joke. Let’s just stay on point.”
She had her arms folded tightly against her chest.
“This is the most underhanded thing I’ve ever seen. Royce wants me off the case so he goes to Bell. And Bell… I can’t believe he would do something like this to me.”
“Yeah, well, he’s probably in it for a dip into the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We probably should have seen something like this coming.”
It was a defense tactic I had used myself before, but not with such obviousness. If you didn’t like the judge or the prosecutor, one way of getting them off the case was to bring someone onto your team who has a conflict of interest with them. Since the defendant is constitutionally guaranteed the defense counsel of his choice, it is usually the judge or prosecutor who must be disqualified from the trial. It was a shrewd move by Royce.
“You see what he’s doing, right?” Maggie said. “He is trying to isolate you. He knows I’m the one person you would trust as second chair and he’s trying to take that away from you. He knows that without me you are going to lose.”
“Thanks for your confidence in me.”
“You know what I mean. You’ve never prosecuted a case. I’m there to help you through it. If he gets me kicked off the table, then who are you going to have? Who would you trust?”
I nodded. She was right.
“Okay, give me the facts. How long were you with Bell?”
“With him? I wasn’t. We went out briefly seven years ago. No more than two months and if he says differently he’s a liar.”
“Is the conflict that you had the relationship or is there something else, something you did or said, something he has knowledge of that creates the conflict?”
“There’s nothing. We went out and it just didn’t take.”
“Who dropped who?”
She paused and looked down at the floor.
“He did.”
I nodded.
“Then there’s the conflict. He can claim you carry a grudge.”
“A woman scorned, is that it? This is such bullshit. You men are—”
“Hold on, Maggie. Hold on. I’m saying that is their argument. I am not agreeing. In fact, I want—”
The door to the stairwell opened and the prosecutor who took our places when we had gotten up for the recess entered and started up the steps. I checked my watch. Only eight minutes had gone by.
“She went back into chambers,” he said as he passed. “You guys are fine.”
“Thanks.”
I waited until I heard his steps on the next landing before continuing in a quiet tone with Maggie.
“Okay, how do I fight this?”
“You tell the judge that this is an obvious attempt to sabotage the prosecution. They’ve hired an attorney for the sole reason that he had a relationship with me, not because of any skill he brings to the table.”
I nodded.
“Okay. What else?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think… it was remote in time, n
o strong emotional attachment, no effect on professional judgment or conduct.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… and what about Bell? Does he have something or know something I have to watch out for?”
She looked at me like I was some sort of traitor.
“Maggie, I need to know so there’s no surprise on top of the surprise, okay?”
“Fine, there’s nothing. He must really be hard up if he’s taking a fee just to knock me off the case.”
“Don’t worry, two can play this game. Let’s go.”
We went back into the courtroom and as we went through the gate I nodded to the clerk so she could call the judge back from chambers. Instead of going to the prosecution table, I diverted to the defense side where Royce was sitting next to his client. David Bell was now seated at the table on the other side of Jessup. I leaned over Royce’s shoulder and whispered just loud enough that his client would hear.
“Clive, when the judge comes out, I’ll give you the chance to withdraw this motion. If you don’t, number one, I’m going to embarrass you in front of the camera and it will be digitally preserved forever. And number two, the release-and-remuneration offer I made to your client last week is withdrawn. Permanently.”
I watched Jessup’s eyebrows rise a few centimeters. He hadn’t heard anything about an offer involving money and freedom. This was because I hadn’t made one. But now it would be up to Royce to convince his client that he had not withheld anything from him. Good luck with that.
Royce smiled like he was pleased with my comeback. He leaned back casually and tossed his pen on his legal pad. It was a Montblanc with gold trim and that was no way to treat it.
“This is really going to get good, yes, Mick?” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you. I’m not withdrawing the motion and I think if you had made me an offer involving release and remuneration I would’ve remembered it.”
So he had called my bluff. He’d still have to convince his client. I saw the judge step out from the door of her chambers and start up the three steps to the bench. I took one more whispered shot at Royce.
“Whatever you paid Bell you wasted.”
The Lincoln Lawyer Collection Page 91
