Read The Reversal for Free Online Page B
Authors: Michael Connelly
separated and questioned but nothing comes up suspicious. They run ’em through the box and Jessup and Clinton are clean but Wilbern has an arrest but no conviction on an attempted rape two years before. That would be good enough to get him a ride downtown for a lineup, but the girl is still missing and there’s no time for formalities, no time to put together a lineup.”
“They probably took him back to the house,” Bosch said. “They had no choice. They had to keep things moving.”
“That’s right. But Kloster knew he was on thin ice. He might get the girl to ID Wilbern but then he’d lose it in court for being unduly suggestive—you know, ‘Is this the guy?’ So he did the next best thing he could. He took all three drivers in their overalls back to the Landy house. Each was a white man in his twenties. They all wore the company overalls. Kloster broke procedure for the sake of speed, hoping to have a chance to find the girl alive. Sarah Landy’s bedroom was on the second floor in the front of the house. Kloster takes the girl up to her room and has her look out the window to the street. Through the venetian blinds. He radios his partner, who has the three guys get out of two patrol cars and stand in the street. But Sarah doesn’t ID Wilbern. She points to Jessup and says that’s the guy.”
Maggie looked through the documents in front of her and checked an investigative chronology before continuing.
“The ID is made at one o’clock. That is really quick work. The girl’s only been gone a little over two hours. They start sweating Jessup but he doesn’t give up a thing. Denies it all. They are working on him and getting nowhere when the call comes in. A girl’s body has been found in a Dumpster behind the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire. That was about ten blocks from Windsor and the Landy house. Cause of death would later be determined to be manual strangulation. She was not raped and there was no semen in the mouth or throat.”
Maggie stopped her summary there. She looked at Bosch and then me and solemnly nodded, giving the dead her moment.
Six
Tuesday, February 16, 4:48 P.M .
B osch liked watching her and listening to the way she talked. He could tell the case was already under her skin. Maggie McFierce. Of course that was what they called her. More important, it was what she thought about herself. He had been on the case with her for less than a week but he understood this within the first hour of meeting her. She knew the secret. That it wasn’t about code and procedure. It wasn’t about jurisprudence and strategy. It was about taking that dark thing that you knew was out there in the world and bringing it inside. Making it yours. Forging it over an internal fire into something sharp and strong that you could hold in your hands and fight back with.
Relentlessly.
“Jessup asked for a lawyer and gave no further statement,” McPherson said, continuing her summary. “The case was initially built around the older sister’s identification and evidence found in Jessup’s tow truck. Three strands of the victim’s hair found in the seat crack. It was probably where he strangled her.”
“There was nothing on the girl?” Bosch asked. “Nothing from Jessup or the truck?”
“Nothing usable in court. The DNA was found on her dress while it was being examined two days later. It was actually the older girl’s dress. The younger girl borrowed it that day. One small deposit of semen was found on the front hem. It was typed but of course there was no DNA in criminal prosecutions back then. A blood type was determined and it was A-positive, the second-most popular type among humans, accounting for thirty-four percent of the population. Jessup matched but all it did was include him in the suspect pool. The prosecutor decided not to introduce it at trial because it would’ve just given the defense the ability to point out to the jury that the donor pool was more than a million men in Los Angeles
“They probably took him back to the house,” Bosch said. “They had no choice. They had to keep things moving.”
“That’s right. But Kloster knew he was on thin ice. He might get the girl to ID Wilbern but then he’d lose it in court for being unduly suggestive—you know, ‘Is this the guy?’ So he did the next best thing he could. He took all three drivers in their overalls back to the Landy house. Each was a white man in his twenties. They all wore the company overalls. Kloster broke procedure for the sake of speed, hoping to have a chance to find the girl alive. Sarah Landy’s bedroom was on the second floor in the front of the house. Kloster takes the girl up to her room and has her look out the window to the street. Through the venetian blinds. He radios his partner, who has the three guys get out of two patrol cars and stand in the street. But Sarah doesn’t ID Wilbern. She points to Jessup and says that’s the guy.”
Maggie looked through the documents in front of her and checked an investigative chronology before continuing.
“The ID is made at one o’clock. That is really quick work. The girl’s only been gone a little over two hours. They start sweating Jessup but he doesn’t give up a thing. Denies it all. They are working on him and getting nowhere when the call comes in. A girl’s body has been found in a Dumpster behind the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire. That was about ten blocks from Windsor and the Landy house. Cause of death would later be determined to be manual strangulation. She was not raped and there was no semen in the mouth or throat.”
Maggie stopped her summary there. She looked at Bosch and then me and solemnly nodded, giving the dead her moment.
Six
Tuesday, February 16, 4:48 P.M .
B osch liked watching her and listening to the way she talked. He could tell the case was already under her skin. Maggie McFierce. Of course that was what they called her. More important, it was what she thought about herself. He had been on the case with her for less than a week but he understood this within the first hour of meeting her. She knew the secret. That it wasn’t about code and procedure. It wasn’t about jurisprudence and strategy. It was about taking that dark thing that you knew was out there in the world and bringing it inside. Making it yours. Forging it over an internal fire into something sharp and strong that you could hold in your hands and fight back with.
Relentlessly.
“Jessup asked for a lawyer and gave no further statement,” McPherson said, continuing her summary. “The case was initially built around the older sister’s identification and evidence found in Jessup’s tow truck. Three strands of the victim’s hair found in the seat crack. It was probably where he strangled her.”
“There was nothing on the girl?” Bosch asked. “Nothing from Jessup or the truck?”
“Nothing usable in court. The DNA was found on her dress while it was being examined two days later. It was actually the older girl’s dress. The younger girl borrowed it that day. One small deposit of semen was found on the front hem. It was typed but of course there was no DNA in criminal prosecutions back then. A blood type was determined and it was A-positive, the second-most popular type among humans, accounting for thirty-four percent of the population. Jessup matched but all it did was include him in the suspect pool. The prosecutor decided not to introduce it at trial because it would’ve just given the defense the ability to point out to the jury that the donor pool was more than a million men in Los Angeles