He quickly went to the stairs and climbed up to the roof landing. He had to work his way around some furniture that was stacked and stored on the landing but found the door unlocked and hurried across the flat, gravel-strewn roof to the air conditioner.
McCaleb first studied the owl before touching it. It matched his memory of the owl on the crime scene tape. Its base was an octagonal stump. He knew it was the missing owl. He removed the wire that had been wrapped around the base and attached to the intake grill of the air conditioner. He noticed that the grill and metal covering of the unit were covered with old bird droppings. He surmised that the droppings were a maintenance problem and Rohrshak, who apparently managed this building as well as the one across the street, had taken the owl from Gunn’s apartment to use to keep the birds away.
McCaleb took the wire and looped it around the owl’s neck so that he could carry it without touching it, though he doubted there would be any usable fingerprint or fiber evidence remaining on it. He lifted it off the air conditioner and headed back to the stairs.
When McCaleb stepped back into Edward Gunn’s apartment he saw two crime scene techs getting equipment out of a toolbox. A stepladder was standing in front of the china cabinet.
“You might want to start with this,” he said.
He watched Rohrshak’s eyes widen as he entered the room and placed the plastic owl on the table.
“You manage the place across the street, don’t you, Mr. Rohrshak?”
“Uh…”
“It’s okay. It’s easy enough to find out.”
“Yes, he does,” Winston said, bending down to look at the owl. “He was over there when we needed him on the day of the murder. He lives there.”
“Any idea how this ended up on the roof?” McCaleb asked.
Rohrshak still didn’t answer.
“Guess it just flew over, right?”
Rohrshak couldn’t take his eyes off the owl.
“Tell you what, you can go now, Mr. Rohrshak. But stay around your place. If we get a print off the bird or the cabinet, we’re going to need to take a set of yours for comparison.”
Now Rohrshak looked at McCaleb and his eyes grew even wider.
“Go on, Mr. Rohrshak.”
The building manager turned and slowly headed out of the apartment.
“And shut the door, please,” McCaleb called after him.
After he was gone and the door was shut Winston almost burst into laughter.
“Terry, you’re being so hard on him. He didn’t really do anything wrong, you know. We cleared the place, he let the sister take what she wanted and then what was he supposed to do, try to rent the place with this stupid owl up there?”
McCaleb shook his head.
“He lied to us. That was wrong. I almost blew a gasket climbing that building across the street. He could have just told us it was up there.”
“Well, he’s properly scared now. I think he learned his lesson.”
“Whatever.”
He stepped back so one of the techs could go to work on the owl while the other climbed the ladder to work on the top of the cabinet.
McCaleb studied the bird as the tech brushed on black fingerprint powder. It appeared that the owl was hand painted. It was dark brown and black on its wings, head and back. Its chest was a lighter brown with some yellow highlighting. Its eyes were a shiny black.
“Has this been outside?” the tech asked.
“Unfortunately,” McCaleb answered, remembering the rains that had swept off the mainland and out to Catalina the week before.
“Well, I’m not getting anything.”
“Figures.”
McCaleb looked at Winston, his eyes portraying renewed anger with Rohrshak.
“Nothing up here, either,” the other tech said. “Too much dust.”
Chapter 9
The trial of David Storey was being held in the Van Nuys courthouse. The crime the case centered on was not remotely connected to Van Nuys or even the San Fernando Valley, but the courthouse had been chosen by schedulers in the district attorney’s office because Department N was available and it was the single largest courtroom in the county – constructed out of two courtrooms several years earlier to comfortably hold the two juries as well as the attendant media crush of the Menendez brothers murder case. The Menendezes’ slaying of their parents had been one of several Los Angeles court cases in the previous decade to capture the media’s and, therefore, the public’s attention. When it was over, the DA’s office did not bother deconstructing the huge courtroom. Somebody there had the foresight to realize that in L.A. there would always be a case that could fill Department N.
And at the moment it was the David Storey case.
The thirty-eight-year-old film director, known for films that pushed the limits of violence and sexuality within an R rating, was charged with the murder of a young actress he had taken home from the premiere of his most recent film. The twenty-three-year-old woman’s body was found the next morning in the small Nichols Canyon bungalow she shared with another would-be actress. The victim had been strangled, her nude body arranged in her bed in a pose investigators believed to be part of a careful plan by her killer to avoid discovery.
The case’s elements – power, celebrity, sex and money – and the added Hollywood connection served to bring the case maximum media attention. David Storey worked on the wrong side of the camera to be a fully realized celebrity himself, but his name was known and he wielded the awesome power of a man who had delivered seven box office hits in as many years. The media were drawn to the Storey trial in the way young people are drawn by the dream of Hollywood. The advance coverage clearly delineated the case as a parable on unchecked Hollywood avarice and excess.
The case also had a degree of secrecy not usually seen in criminal trials. The prosecutors assigned to the case took their evidence to a grand jury in order to seek charges against Storey. The move allowed them to bypass a preliminary hearing, where most of the evidence accumulated against a defendant is usually made public. Without that fount of case information, the media were left to mine their sources in both the prosecution and defense camps. Still, little about the case was leaked to the media other than generalities. The evidence the prosecution would use to tie Storey to the murder remained cloaked, and all the more cause for the media frenzy around the trial.
It was just that frenzy that had convinced the district attorney to move the trial to the large Department N courtroom in Van Nuys. The second jury box would be used to accommodate more media members in the courtroom, while the unused deliberation room would be converted into a media room where the video feed could be watched by the second- and third-tier journalists. The move, which would give all media – from the National Enquirer to the New York Times – full access to the trial and its players, guaranteed the proceedings would become the first full-blooded media circus of the new century.
In the center ring of this circus, sitting at the prosecution table, was Detective Harry Bosch, the lead investigator of the case. All the pretrial media analysis came down to one conclusion: the charges against David Storey would rise and fall with Bosch. All evidence in support of the murder charge was said to be circumstantial; the foundation of the case would come from Bosch. The one solid piece of evidence that had been leaked to the media was that Bosch would testify that in a private moment, with no other witnesses or devices at hand to record the statement, Storey had smugly admitted to him that he had committed the crime and boasted that he would surely get away with it.
McCaleb knew all of this as he walked into the Van Nuys courthouse shortly before noon. He stood in line to go
