hills. We left the house and drove to the fire station on Mulholland just east of Laurel Canyon Boulevard. We asked to use a phone there and I made the call to the DA.”
“And who did you speak with?”
“You. I recounted the case, what had transpired during the search and what Mr. Storey said at the door. It was decided to continue the investigation at that point and not make the arrest.”
“Did you agree with that decision?”
“Not at the time. I wanted to arrest him.”
“Did Mr. Storey’s admission change the investigation?”
“It pretty much closed the focus. The man had admitted the crime to me. We began looking only at him.”
“Did you ever consider that perhaps the admission was an empty boast, that at the same time you were in essence baiting the defendant, he was baiting you?”
“Yes, I considered it. But ultimately I believed he made the statements because they were true and because he believed he was in an invincible position at that point.”
There was a sharp ripping sound as Storey tore the top page off his sketch pad. He crumpled the paper and bounced it across the table. It hit a computer screen and bounced off the table to the floor.
“Thank you, Detective,” Langwiser said. “Now, you said the decision was to continue the investigation. Can you tell the jury what that entailed?”
Bosch described how he and his partners had interviewed dozens of witnesses who had seen the defendant and the victim at the film premiere or at the reception that followed in a circus tent erected in a nearby parking lot. They also interviewed dozens more people who knew Storey or had worked with him. Bosch acknowledged that none of these interviews had produced information important to the investigation.
“You mentioned earlier that during the search of the defendant’s home you became curious about a missing book, correct?”
“Yes.”
Fowkkes objected.
“There has been no evidence whatsoever about a missing book. There was a space on the shelf. It does not mean there was ever a book in that place.”
Langwiser promised she would tie it all up promptly and the judge overruled.
“Did there come a time when you determined what book had been in that space on the shelf in the defendant’s home?”
“Yes, in the course of our gathering of background information on Mr. Storey, my partner, Kizmin Rider, who was aware of his work and professional reputation, remembered that she had read a story about him in a magazine called Architectural Digest. She was able to do an Internet search and determine that the issue she remembered was from February of last year. She then ordered a copy of the magazine from the publisher. What she had remembered was that there were photos in the article of Mr. Storey in his house. She remembered his bookshelves because she is an avid reader and was curious about what books this movie director would have on his shelves.”
Langwiser made a motion to introduce the magazine as her next exhibit. It was received by the judge and Langwiser gave it to Bosch on the witness stand.
“Is that the magazine your partner received?”
“Yes.”
“Could you turn to the story on the defendant and describe the photograph on the opening page of the story?”
Bosch flipped to a marker in the magazine.
“It is a photograph of David Storey sitting on the couch in the living room of his house. To his left are the bookshelves.”
“Can you read the titles of the books on the spines ofthe books?”
“Some of them. They are not all clear.”
“When you received this magazine from the publisher, what did you do with it?”
“We saw that not all of the books were clear. We contacted the publisher again and attempted to borrow the negative of this photo. We dealt with the editor in chief, who would not allow the negatives out of the office. He cited media law and free-press restraints.”
“So what happened next?”
“The editor said he would even fight a court order. An attorney from the city attorney’s office was called in and began negotiating with the magazine’s lawyer. The result was that I flew to New York City and was allowed access to the negative in the photo lab in the Architectural Digest offices.”
“For the record, what date were you there?”
“I took a redeye on October twenty-ninth. I was at the magazine’s office the following morning. It was a Monday, October thirtieth.”
“And what did you do there?”
“I had the magazine’s photo lab manager make blowups of the shot containing the bookshelves.”
Langwiser introduced two large blowup photographs on hard backing as her next exhibits. After they were approved over unsustained objection she put them on easels set in front of the jury. One showed the bookcase in full while the other was a blowup of one shelf. The image was grainy but the titles on the spines of the books could be read.
“Detective, did you compare these photos with those taken during the search of the defendant’s house?”
“Yes, we did.”
Langwiser asked permission to set up a third and fourth easel and to put blowup photos taken during the search of the full bookcase and the shelf with the space for a missing book. The judge approved. She then asked Bosch to step down from the witness stand and use a pointer to explain what he found during his comparison study. It was obvious to anyone looking at the photos what he found but Langwiser was painstakingly going through the motions so that no juror could be confused.
Bosch put the pointer on the photo showing the open space in the shelved books. He then brought it over and put the tip on a book that was in the same spot.
“When we searched the house on October seventeenth there was no book here between The Fifth Horizon and Print the Legend. Here in this photo, taken ten months before, there is a book between The Fifth Horizon and Print the Legend.”
“And what is the title of that book?”
“Victims of the Night.”
“Okay, and did you look at photos you had from the search of the full bookcase in order to see if this book, Victims of the Night, had been shelved elsewhere?”
Bosch pointed to the October 17 blowup of the entire bookcase.
“We did. It’s not there.”
“Did you find this book anywhere in the house?”
“No, we did not.”
“Thank you, Detective. You can return to the witness stand now.”
Langwiser introduced a copy of Victims of the Night as an exhibit and handed it to Bosch.
“Can you tell the jury what that is, Detective?”
“It is a copy of Victims of the Night.”
“Is that the book that was on the defendant’s shelf when his photograph was taken for Architectural Digest in January of last year?”
“No, it’s not. It’s a copy of the same book. I bought it.”
“Where?”
“A place called Mystery Bookstore in Westwood.”
“Why did you buy it there?”
“I called around. It was the only place I could find that had it in stock.”
“Why was it so hard to find?”
“The man at Mystery Bookstore told me it was a small printing by a small publisher.”
“Did you read this book?”
