“I just don’t think you have it here, Detectives. You have him with the gun but not at the murder scene. He could have handled the gun days or weeks before the killing.”
She waved dismissively at the papers spread in front of her.
“This bit about him burglarizing a drive-in movie theater where the victim and her friends liked to go is tenuous at best. You really put me on the spot here by asking me to sign off on something that just isn’t there.”
“It is there,” Bosch said. “We know it is there.”
Rider put a hand on his arm, a warning not to lose it.
“I’m not seeing it, Detective,” Demchak said. “You are asking me to bail you out here. You don’t have enough probable cause and you are asking me to make up the difference. I can’t do it. Not as is.”
“Your Honor,” Rider said. “If we don’t get this signed we will lose the opportunity with the newspaper story.”
The judge smiled at her.
“That has nothing to do with me and what I must do here, Detective. You know that. I am not an arm of the police department. I am independent and I have to deal with the facts of the case as presented.”
“The victim was biracial,” Bosch said. “This guy is a documented hater. He stole that gun and it was used to kill a girl of mixed race. The connection is right there.”
“Not a connection of evidence, Detective. A circumstantial connection of inference.”
Bosch stared at the judge for a moment and the judge stared right back.
“Do you have children, Judge?” he asked.
The color immediately rose in the judge’s cheeks.
“What does that have to do with this?”
“Your Honor,” Rider broke in. “We’ll come back to you with this.”
“No,” Bosch said. “No, we’re not coming back. We need this now, Judge. This guy has been out there free for seventeen years. What if it had been your daughter? Could you look away then? Rebecca Verloren was an only child.”
Judge Demchak’s eyes grew darker. When she spoke it was with measures of both calm and anger.
“I am not looking away from anything, Detective. I happen to be the only one in this room that is looking closely at this. And I might add that if you continue to insult and question the court, then I will remand you to the lockup for contempt. I could have a bailiff in here in five seconds. Perhaps you could use the downtime to contemplate the deficiencies of your presentation.”
Bosch pressed on undaunted.
“Her mother still lives in the house,” Bosch said. “The bedroom she was taken from is still the same as the day she was killed. Same bedspread, same pillows, same everything. The room-and the mother-are frozen in time.”
“But those facts are not germane to this.”
“Her father became a drunk. He lost his business, then his wife and home. I visited with him on Fifth Street this morning. That’s where he lives now. I know that’s not germane either, but I thought you might want to know. I guess we don’t have enough facts for you but we have a lot of the ripples, Your Honor.”
The judge held his eyes and Bosch knew he was either about to go to jail or walk out with a signed warrant. No in-between. After a moment he saw the glimmer of pain in her eyes. Anybody who spends time in the trenches of the criminal justice system-either side-gets that look after a while.
“Very well, Detective,” she finally said.
She looked down and scribbled a signature at the bottom of the last page and started to fill in the spaces that dictated the length of the wiretaps.
“But I am still not convinced,” she said sternly. “So I am giving you seventy-two hours.”
“Your Honor,” Bosch said.
But Rider put her hand on Bosch’s arm again, trying to stop him from turning a yes into a no. Then she spoke.
“Your Honor, seventy-two hours is a very short time period for this. We were hoping that we would have at least a week.”
“You said the newspaper article is coming out tomorrow,” the judge responded.
“Yes, Judge, it is supposed to, but -”
“You will know something pretty quick then. If you feel you need to extend it then come back and see me on Friday and try to convince me. Seventy-two hours, and I want daily summaries delivered each morning. If I don’t get them I am going to hold you both in contempt. I am not going to allow you to go fishing. If what is on the summaries is not on point then I will shut you down early. Is all of that clear?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Bosch and Rider said in unison.
“Good. Now, I have a status conference in my courtroom. It is time for you to go and for me to go back to work.”
Rider collected the paperwork and they said their thanks. As they headed to the door, Judge Demchak called out to their backs.
“Detective Bosch?”
Bosch turned around and looked at her.
“Yes, Judge?”
“You saw the picture, didn’t you?” she said. “Of my daughter. You guessed I have only one child.”
Bosch looked at her for a moment and then nodded.
“I only have one myself,” he said. “I know what it’s like.”
She held his eyes for a moment before speaking.
“You can go now,” she said.
Bosch nodded and followed Rider through the door.
24
THEY DIDN’T SPEAK to each other as they left the courthouse. It was as if they wanted to get out of there without putting the jinx on it, as if their saying one word about what had happened might echo back through the building and make the judge change her mind and recall them. Now that they had the judge’s signature on the authorization forms, all they cared about was getting out.
Once on the sidewalk in front of the monolithic courthouse Bosch looked at Rider and smiled.
“That was close,” he said.
She smiled and nodded her approval.
“Ripples, huh? You took it right up to the red line with her. I thought I was going to have to go downstairs and post a bond for you.”
They started walking toward Parker Center. Bosch pulled his phone out and turned it back on.
“Yeah, it was close,” he said. “But we got it. You want to tell Abel to set up the meeting with the others?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him. I was just going to wait until we got over there.”
Bosch checked his phone and saw he had missed a call and had a message. He didn’t recognize the number but it had an 818 area code-the Valley. He checked the message and heard a voice he didn’t want to hear.
“Detective Bosch, it’s McKenzie Ward at the
“Shit,” Bosch said as he deleted the message.
“What?” Rider asked.
“It’s the reporter. I told Muriel Verloren not to mention Mackey to her. But it sounds like she let it slip. Either that or the reporter is talking to somebody else.”
“Shit.”
“That’s what I said.”
They walked a little further without speaking. Bosch was thinking of a way to deal with the reporter. They had to keep Mackey out of the story or else he’d probably just cut and run without bothering to call anyone else.
