The judge returned to the bench two minutes after leaving and Bosch wondered if he had retreated to his chambers to put a holster on under the robes. As soon as he sat down Houghton looked at the defense table. Storey was sitting with his face somberly pointed down at the sketch pad in front of him.
“Are we ready?” the judge asked.
All parties murmured they were ready. The judge called for the jury and they were brought in, most of them looking directly at Storey as they entered.
“Okay, folks, we’re going to try this again,” Judge Houghton said. “The exclamations you heard a few minutes ago from the defendant are to be ignored. They are not evidence, they are not anything. If Mr. Storey wants to personally deny the charges or anything else said about him in testimony, he’ll get that chance.”
Bosch watched Langwiser’s eyes dance. The judge’s comments were his way of slapping back at the defense. He was setting up the expectation that Storey would testify during the defense phase. If he didn’t, then it could be a letdown for the jurors.
The judge turned it back over to Langwiser, who continued her questioning of Bosch.
“Before we were interrupted, you were testifying about your conversation with the defendant at the door to his house.”
“Yes.”
“You quoted the defendant as saying, ‘And I’ll get away with it,’ is that correct?”
“Correct.”
“And you took this comment to be referring to the death of Jody Krementz, correct?”
“That’s what we were talking about, yes.”
“Did he say anything else after that?”
“Yes.”
Bosch paused, wondering if Storey would make another outburst. He didn’t.
“He said, ‘I am a god in this town, Detective Bosch. You don’t fuck with the gods.’”
Nearly ten seconds of silence went by before Langwiser was prompted by the judge to move on.
“What did you do after the defendant made this statement to you?”
“Well, I was kind of taken aback. I was surprised that he would say this to me.”
“You were not recording the conversation, is that correct?”
“That is correct. It was just a conversation at the door after I knocked.”
“So what happened next?”
“I went to the car and immediately wrote out these notes of the conversation so I would have it verbatim from when it was freshest in my mind. I told my partners what had just transpired and we decided to call the district attorney’s office for advice as to whether this admission to me would give us probable cause to arrest Mr. Storey. Um, what happened was that none of us could get a signal on our cell phones because we were up there in the 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?”
“Parts of it. It is mostly photographs of unusual crime scenes and accident scenes, that sort of thing.”
“Is there anything in there that struck you as unusual or perhaps relating to the killing of Jody Krementz?”
“Yes, there is a photograph of a death scene on page seventy-three that immediately drew my attention.”
“Describe it, please.”
Bosch opened the book to a marker. He spoke as he looked at the full-page photograph on the right side of the book.
“It shows a woman in a bed. She’s dead. A scarf is tied around her neck and looped over one of the bars of the headboard. She is nude from the waist down. Her left hand is between her legs and two of her fingers have penetrated the vagina.”
“Can you read the caption beneath the photo, please?”
“It says, ‘Autoerotic Death: This woman was found in her bed in New Orleans, a victim of autoerotic asphyxia. It is estimated that around the world more than five hundred people die from this accidental misadventure each year.’”
Langwiser asked and received permission to place two more blowup photos on the easels as exhibits. She placed them right over two of the bookshelf photos. Side by side the photos were of Jody Krementz’s body in her bed and of the page from Victims of the Night.
“Detective, did you make a comparison between the photo of the victim in this case, Jody Krementz, and the photo from the book?”
“Yes, I did. I found them to be very similar.”
“Did it appear to you that the body of Ms. Krementz could have been staged, using the photo from the book as a model or baseline?”
“Yes, it did.”
“Did you ever have occasion to ask the defendant what happened to his copy of the book Victims of the Night?”
“No, since the day of the search of his home, Mr. Storey and his attorneys have refused repeated requests for an interview.”
Langwiser nodded and looked at the judge.
“Your Honor, may I take these exhibits down and offer them to the court clerk?”
“Please do,” the judge responded.
Langwiser made a show of taking the photos of the two dead women down first by folding them in toward each other like two sides of a mirror closing. It was a little thing but Bosch saw the jurors watching.
“Okay, Detective Bosch,” Langwiser said when the easels were cleared. “Did you make any inquiries or do any further investigation into autoerotic deaths?”
“Yes. I knew that if this case ever moved to a trial that the classification of the death as a homicide staged to look like this sort of accident might be challenged. I was also curious about what that caption in the book said. Frankly, I was surprised by the figure of five hundred deaths a year. I did some checking with the FBI and found that the figure was actually accurate, if not low.”
“And did that cause you to do any further research?”
“Yes, on a more local level.”
With Langwiser prompting, Bosch testified that he checked through records at the medical examiner’s office for deaths due to autoerotic asphyxia. His search went back five years.
“And what did you find?”
“In those five years, sixteen deaths in Los Angeles County classified as accidental death by misadventure had been attributed specifically to autoerotic asphyxia.”
“And how many of these cases involved female victims?”
“Only one case involved a female.”
“Did you examine this case?”
Fowkkes was up with an objection and this time asked for a sidebar conference. The judge allowed it and the attorneys gathered at the side of the bench. Bosch could not hear the whispered conversation but knew that Fowkkes was most likely trying to stop the direction of the testimony. Langwiser and Kretzler had anticipated he would move once more to block any mention of Alicia Lopez in front of the jurors. It would likely be the pivotal decision in the trial – for both sides.
After five minutes of whispered argument, the judge sent the lawyers back to their places and told the jurors that the issue before the court would take longer than anticipated. He adjourned for another fifteen-minute break. Bosch returned to the prosecution table.
“Something new?” Bosch asked Langwiser.
“No, the same old argument. For some reason the judge wants to hear it again. Wish us luck.”
The lawyers and the judge retreated to chambers to argue the point. Bosch was left at the table. He used his cell phone to check messages at his home and office. There was one message at work. It was from Terry McCaleb. He thanked Bosch for the tip from the night before. He said he got some good information at Nat’s and that he’d be in touch. Bosch erased it and closed the phone, wondering what it was that McCaleb had picked up.
When the lawyers returned through the rear door of the courtroom, Bosch read the judge’s decision in their faces. Fowkkes looked dour, with his eyes downcast. Kretzler and Langwiser came back smiling.
After the jurors were brought back and the trial resumed, Langwiser went directly in for the hit. She asked the court reporter to read back the last question before the objection.
“‘Did you examine this case?’” the reporter read.
“Let’s strike that,” Langwiser said. “Let’s not confuse the issue. Detective, the one female case of the sixteen you found in the medical examiner’s records, what was the name of the deceased in that case?”
“Alicia Lopez.”
“Can you tell us a little bit about her?”
“She was twenty-four and lived in Culver City. She worked as an administrative assistant to the vice president of production at Sony Pictures, also in Culver City. She was found dead in her bed on the twentieth of May, nineteen ninety-eight.”
“She lived alone?”
“Yes.”
“What were the circumstances of her death?”
“She was found in her bed by a coworker who became concerned when she had missed two days of work following the weekend without calling in. The coroner estimated she had been dead three to four days by the time she was found. Decomposition of the body was extensive.”
“Ms. Langwiser?” Judge Houghton interrupted. “It was agreed that you would lay foundation connecting the cases quickly.”
“I’m right there, Your Honor. Thank you. Detective, did anything about this case alert you or draw your attention in any way?”
“Several things. I looked at photos taken at the death scene and though decomposition was extensive I was able to note that the victim in this case was in a posture closely paralleling that of the victim in the present case. I also noted that the ligature in the Lopez case was also used without a buffering, which was the same with the present case. I also knew from our backgrounding investigation of Mr. Storey that at the time of Ms. Lopez’s death he was making a film for a company called Cold House Films, a company which was being financed in part by Sony Pictures.”
In the moment following his answer Bosch noticed that the courtroom had become unusually still and silent. No one was whispering in the gallery or clearing their throat. It was as if everyone – jurors, lawyers, spectators and media – all decided to hold their breath at once. Bosch glanced at the jurors and saw that almost all of them were looking at the defense table. Bosch looked there as well and saw Storey, his face still aimed downward, silently seething. Langwiser finally broke the silence.
“Detective, did you make further inquiries about the Lopez case?”
“Yes, I spoke to the detective who handled it for the Culver City Police Department. I also made inquiries about Ms. Lopez’s job at Sony.”
“And what did you learn about her that would have bearing on the present case?”
“I learned that at the time of her death she was acting as a liaison between the studio and the field production of the film David Storey was directing.”
“Do you recall the name of that film?”
“The Fifth Horizon.”
“Where was it being filmed?”
“In Los Angeles. Mostly in Venice.”
“And as a liaison would Ms. Lopez have had any direct contact with Mr. Storey?”
“Yes. She spoke with him by phone or in person every day of the shoot.”
Again the silence seemed to be roaring. Langwiser milked it for as long as she could and then started driving home the nails.
“Let me see if I have all of this straight, Detective. Your testimony is that in the past five years there has been only one death of a female in Los Angeles County attributed to autoerotic asphyxia and that the present case involving the death of Jody Krementz was staged to appear as an autoerotic asphyxia?”
“Objection,” Fowkkes interjected. “Asked and answered.”
“Overruled,” Houghton said without argument from Langwiser. “The witness may answer.”
“Yes,” Bosch said. “Correct.”
“And that both of these women knew the defendant, David Storey?”
“Correct.”
“And that both of these deaths show similarities to a photograph of an autoerotic death contained in a book known at one time to be in the defendant’s collection at home?”
“Correct.”
Bosch looked over at Storey as he said it, hoping he would look up so that they could lock eyes one more time.
“What did the Culver City Police Department have to say about this, Detective Bosch?”
“Based upon my inquiries they have reopened the case. But they are hampered.”
“Why is that?”
“The case is old. Because it was originally ruled an accidental death, not all the records were kept in archives. Because decomposition was advanced at the time of the body’s discovery it is hard to make definitive observations and conclusions. And the body cannot be exhumed because it was cremated.”
“It was? By whom?”
Fowkkes stood and objected but the judge said the argument had already been heard and overruled. Langwiser prompted Bosch before Fowkkes had even sat back down.
“By whom, Detective Bosch?”
“By her family. But it was paid for… the cremation, the service, everything was paid for by David Storey as a gift in Alicia Lopez’s memory.”
Langwiser loudly flipped up a page on her legal tablet. She was on a roll and everybody knew it. It was what cops and prosecutors called being in the tube. It was a surfing reference. It meant they had ridden the case into the water tunnel where everything was going smoothly and perfectly and was surrounding them in glorious balance.
“Detective, subsequent to this part of the investigation, did there come a time when a woman named Annabelle Crowe came to see you?”
“Yes. A story had broken in the Los Angeles Times about the investigation and how David Storey was the focus. She read the story and came forward.”
“And who is she?”
“She’s an actress. She lives in West Hollywood.”
“And what bearing did she have on this case?”
“She told me that she had dated David Storey at one time last year and he choked her while they were having sex.”
Fowkkes made another objection, this one without the force of his other protestations. But again he was overruled, as the testimony had been cleared by the judge in earlier motions.
“Where did Ms. Crowe say this incident took place?”
“In Mr. Storey’s home on Mulholland Drive. I asked her to describe the place and she was able to do so accurately. She had been there.”
“Couldn’t she have seen the issue of Architectural Digest that showed photos of the defendant’s home?”
“She was able to describe in accurate detail areas of the master bedroom and bath that were not shown in the magazine.”
“What happened to her when the defendant choked her?”
“She told me she passed out. When she awoke Mr. Storey was not in the room. He was taking a shower. She grabbed her clothing and fled from the home.”
Langwiser underlined that with a long silence. She then flipped the pages of her pad down, glanced over at the defense table and then looked up at Judge Houghton.
“Your Honor, that is all I have for Detective Bosch at this time.”