going to do with the new asshole I’m going to tear him.”
He got up armed with the deposition transcript and lumbered to the lectern as if he were lugging an elephant rifle. Wieczorek, who wore thick glasses that magnified his eyes, watched him suspiciously.
“Mr. Wieczorek, do you remember me? Remember the deposition I took of you a few months back?”
Belk held the transcript up, as a reminder.
“I remember you,” Wieczorek said.
“Ninety-five pages, Mr. Wieczorek. Nowhere in this transcript is there any mention of any bachelor party. Why is that?”
“I guess because you didn’t ask.”
“But you didn’t bring it up, did you? The police are saying your best buddy murdered eleven women, you supposedly know that’s a lie, but you don’t say a thing, is that right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Care to tell us why?”
“Far as I was concerned, you were part of it. I only answered what I was asked. I wasn’t volunteering shi-uh, nothing.”
“Let me ask you, did you ever tell the police this? Back then, back when Church was killed and all the headlines said he killed eleven women? Ever pick up the phone one time and tell them they got the wrong guy?”
“No. At the time I didn’t know. It was only when I read a book that came out on the case a couple years ago and there were details in there about when that last girl got killed. Then I knew he was with me during that whole time. I called the police and asked for the task force and they said it was disbanded long ago. I left a message for that fellow the book said was in charge, Lloyd, I think it was, and he never called me.”
Belk exhaled into the lectern’s microphone, creating a loud sigh that indicated his weariness in dealing with this moron.
“So, if I can recap, you are telling this jury that two years after the murders, when this book came out, you read it and immediately realized you had an ironclad alibi for your dead friend. Am I missing anything, Mr. Wieczorek?”
“Uh, just the part about suddenly realizing. It wasn’t sudden.”
“Then what was it?”
“Well, when I read the date-September 28-it set me to thinking and I just remembered that the bachelor party was on September 28 that year and Norman was there at my house all that time. So then I verified it and called Norman’s wife to tell her he wasn’t what they said he was.”
“You verified it? With the others at the party?”
“No, didn’t have to.”
“Then how, Mr. Wieczorek?” Belk asked in an exasperated tone.
“I looked at the video I had of that night. It had the date and time down in the corner of the frame.”
Bosch saw Belk’s face turn a lighter shade of pale. The lawyer looked at the judge, then down at his pad, then back up at the judge. Bosch felt his heart sink. Belk had broken the same cardinal rule Chandler had broken the day before. He had asked a question for which he didn’t already know the answer.
It didn’t take a lawyer to know that since it was Belk who had drawn out mention of the videotape, Chandler was now free to explore it, to move to introduce the videotape as evidence. It had been a clever trap. Because it was new evidence from Wieczorek, not contained in his deposition, Chandler would have had to inform Belk earlier if she planned to draw it out on direct examination. Instead, she had skillfully allowed Belk to blunder in and draw it out. He now stood there defenseless, hearing it for the first time along with the jurors.
“Nothing further,” Belk said and returned to his seat with his head down. He immediately pulled one of the law books on the table onto his lap and began paging through it.
Chandler went to the lectern for redirect.
“Mr. Wieczorek, this tape you mentioned to Mr. Belk, do you still have it?”
“Sure, brought it with me.”
Chandler then moved to have the tape shown to the jury. Judge Keyes looked at Belk, who lumbered slowly to the lectern.
“Your Honor,” Belk managed to say, “can defense have a ten-minute recess to research case law?”
The judge glanced at the clock.
“It’s a little early, isn’t it, Mr. Belk? We just started.”
“Your Honor,” Chandler said. “The plaintiff has no objection. I’ll need time to set up the video equipment.”
“Very well,” the judge said. “Ten minutes for counsel. The jury can take a fifteen-minute break and then report back to the assembly room.”
While they stood for the jury, Belk was flipping pages in the heavy law book. And when it was time to sit down, Bosch pulled his chair close to his lawyer’s.
“Not now,” Belk said. “I’ve got ten minutes.”
“You fucked up.”
“No, we fucked up. We are a team. Remember that.”
Bosch left his teammate there while he went out to smoke a cigarette. When he got to the statue, Chandler was already there. He lit a smoke anyway and kept his distance. She looked at him and smirked. Bosch spoke.
“You tricked him, didn’t you?”
“Tricked him with the truth.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
She put a half-smoked cigarette in the sand of the ash can and said, “I better get back in there and get the equipment set up.”
She smirked again. Bosch wondered if she was that good or it was Belk who was that bad.
Belk lost his half-hour argument to keep the tape from being introduced. He said that since it was not brought up during deposition, it was new evidence which the plaintiff could not submit at so late a date. Judge Keyes denied his claim, pointing out what everyone knew, that it had been Belk who had brought the tape to light.
After the jury was brought back in, Chandler asked Wieczorek several questions about the tape and where it had been for the last four years. After Judge Keyes dismissed one more objection from Belk, she rolled a TV/VCR combination to a position in front of the jury box and put in the tape, which Wieczorek had retrieved from a friend sitting in the gallery. Bosch and Belk had to stand up and move into the gallery seats to get a view of the TV screen.
As he made the move, Harry saw Bremmer from the
The tape was long and boring but was not continuous. It was stopped and started during the evening of the bachelor party but the digital readout in the lower right corner kept the time and date. If it was correct, it was true that Church had an alibi for the last killing attributed to him.
It was dizzying for Bosch to watch. There was Church, no toupee, bald as a baby, drinking beer and laughing with his friends. The man Bosch had killed, toasting a friend’s marriage, looking like the All American nerd that Bosch knew he had not been.
