“Your Honor, you have to put the trial on hiatus. Until at least next week. It will give the investigation time to possibly come to some fruition.”
“Some fruition? Forget it, Belk. You’re in the middle of a trial, my friend.”
Belk stood and leaned across the great wide desk.
“Your Honor, I request an emergency stay of these proceedings while we take the matter on appeal to the ninth district.”
“You can appeal anything you like, Mr. Belk, but there is no stay. We’re in trial here.”
There was silence as everyone looked at Belk.
“What if I refuse to answer?” Bosch asked.
Judge Keyes looked at him a long moment and said, “Then I’ll hold you in contempt. Then I’ll ask you to answer again and if you refuse again I will put you in jail. Then when your attorney here asks for bail while he appeals, I will say no bail. All of this will take place out there in front of the jury and the media folks. And I will place no restrictions on what Ms. Chandler does or doesn’t say to the reporters in the hallway. So, what I am saying is, you can try to be some kind of hero and not answer, but the story will get to the media anyway. It’s like I said a few minutes ago to Mr. Belk when we were off the rec-”
“You can’t do this,” Belk suddenly erupted. “It, it-it’s not right. You have to protect this investigation. You-”
“Son, don’t you ever tell me what I have to do,” the judge said very slowly and sternly. He seemed to grow in stature while Belk shrank back away from him. “Only thing I have to do is ensure there is a fair trial on this matter. You are asking me to sit on information that could be vital to the plaintiff’s case. You are also trying to intimidate me and that is one thing I don’t take to. I’m no county judge that needs your nod every time an election comes ’round. I’m appointed for life. We’re off here.”
Miss Penny stopped typing. Bosch almost didn’t want to see Belk’s slaughter. The deputy city attorney’s head was bowed and he had assumed the posture of the doomed. The back of his neck was turned up and ready to receive the axe.
“So my advice here is that you get your fat ass out there and start working on how the hell you’re going to salvage this on redirect. Because in five minutes Detective Bosch is going to answer that question or he’s going to be handing his gun and his badge and his belt and shoelaces over to a marshal at the federal lockup. We’re back on. Hearing adjourned.”
Judge Keyes brought his arm down and ground his cigarette into the ashtray. He never took his eyes off Belk.
As the procession made its way back into the courtroom, Bosch moved up closely behind Chandler. He glanced back to make sure the judge had turned to go to the bench and then said in a low voice, “If you’re getting your information from inside the department, I’m going to burn your source down when I find him.”
She didn’t miss a stride. She didn’t even turn back when she said, “You mean, if you’re not already ashes.”
Bosch took his place at the witness stand and the jury was brought back in. The judge told Chandler to continue.
“Rather than have the reporter find the last question, let me just rephrase it. After you killed Mr. Church, did the so called Dollmaker killings stop?”
Bosch hesitated, thinking. He looked out into the spectator section and saw that there were more reporters now-or at least people he thought were reporters. They all sat together.
He also saw Sylvia, sitting in the back row by herself. She offered a small smile to him which he did not return. He wondered how long she had been out there.
“Detective Bosch?” the judge prompted.
“I can’t answer the question without compromising an ongoing investigation,” Bosch finally said.
“Detective Bosch, we just went over this,” the judge said angrily. “Answer the question.”
Bosch knew that his refusal and jailing would not stop the story from getting out. Chandler would tell all the reporters as the judge had given her the okay to do. So putting himself in jail, he knew, only stopped him from chasing the follower. He decided to answer. He carefully composed a statement while stalling by taking a long, slow drink of water from the paper cup.
“Norman Church obviously stopped killing people after he was dead. But there was somebody- there is somebody else still out there. A killer who uses the same methods as Norman Church.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bosch. And when did you come to that conclusion?”
“This week, when another body was found.”
“Who was that victim?”
“A woman named Rebecca Kaminski. She had been missing two years.”
“The details of her death matched the murders of the other Dollmaker victims?”
“Exactly, except for one thing.”
“And that was what?”
“She had been entombed in concrete. Hidden. Norman Church always discarded his victims in public places.”
“No other differences?”
“Not that I know of at the moment.”
“Yet, because she died two years after Norman Church was killed by you, there is no way possible that he is responsible.”
“Correct.”
“Because he was dead he has the perfect alibi, doesn’t he?”
“Correct.”
“How was the body found?”
“As I said, it had been buried in concrete.”
“And what led police to the spot where it was buried?”
“We received a note with directions.”
Chandler then offered a copy of the note as plaintiff’s exhibit 4A and Judge Keyes accepted it after overruling an objection by Belk. Chandler then handed a copy to Bosch to identify and read.
“Out loud this time,” she said before he could start. “For the jury.”
Bosch felt eerie reading the words of the follower out loud in the quiet courtroom. After a beat of silence when he was done, Chandler began again.
“‘I’m still in the game,’ he writes. What does that mean?”
“It means he is trying to take credit for all of the killings. He wants attention.”
“Could that be because he committed all of the murders?”
“No, because Norman Church committed nine of them. The evidence found in Church’s apartment irrefutably links him to those nine. There is no doubt.”
“Who found this evidence?”
Bosch said, “Me.”
“So, then, isn’t there a lot of doubt, Detective Bosch? Isn’t this idea of a second killer who uses the exact same method preposterous?”
“No, it’s not preposterous. It is happening. I did not kill the wrong man.”
“Isn’t it the truth that this talk of a copycat killer, a follower, is all an elaborate charade for covering up the fact that you did exactly that, killed the wrong man? An innocent, unarmed man who had done nothing worse than hire a prostitute with his wife’s tacit approval?”
“No, it’s not. Norman Church killed-”
“Thank you, Mr. Bosch.”
“-a lot of women. He was a monster.”
“Like the one who killed your mother?”
He unconsciously looked out into the audience, saw Sylvia and then looked away. He tried to compose himself, slow his breathing. He was not going to let Chandler tear him open.
