A Darkness More Than Night (39 page)

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Authors: Michael Connelly

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BOOK: A Darkness More Than Night
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“Now, how do you want to do this? These tapes are post office property. They are not leaving the premises. I can set you up over here at the desk. I’ve got a portable TV with built-in VCR if you want to use it.”
“Are you sure we just can’t borrow them for the day?” Winston said. “I could have them back by —”
“Not without a court order. That’s what Mr. Preechnar told me. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Then I guess we don’t have a choice,” Winston said, looking at McCaleb and shaking her head in frustration.
While Lucas went to get the TV, McCaleb and Winston decided that McCaleb would stay and watch the videotape while Winston went to her office for an
11 A.M.
meeting with the bureau men, Twilley and Friedman. She said she would not be mentioning McCaleb’s new investigation or the possibility that his earlier focus on Bosch might have been in error. She would return the copied murder book and crime scene tape.
“I know you don’t believe in coincidences but that’s all you have at the moment, Terry. You come up with something on the tape and I’ll bring it to the captain and we’ll blow Twilley and Friedman out of the water. But until you have it . . . I’m still in the doghouse and need something more than a coincidence to look anywhere other than at Bosch.”
“What about the call to Tafero?”
“What call?”
“Somehow he knew Gunn was in the tank and he came and bailed him out — so they could kill him that night and pin it on Bosch.”
“I don’t know about the call — if it wasn’t Zucker, it was probably somebody else in the station he’s got a sweetheart deal with. And the rest of what you just said is pure speculation without a single fact backing it up.”
“I think it’s —”
“Stop, Terry. I don’t want to hear it until you have something backing it up. I’m going to work.”
As if on cue, Lucas came back pushing a cart with a small television on top of it.
“I’ll set you up with this,” he said.
“Mr. Lucas, I need to go to an appointment,” Winston said. “My colleague is going to look at the tapes. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Happy to be of service, ma’am.”
Winston looked at McCaleb.
“Call me.”
“You want me to drive you back to your car?”
“It’s just a few blocks. I’ll walk it.”
He nodded.
“Happy hunting,” she said.
McCaleb nodded. She had said that to him once before on a case that had not turned out so happily for him.

 

 

37
Langwiser and Kretzler told Bosch they were going ahead with the plan to rest their case by the close of the day.
“We got him,” Kretzler said, smiling and enjoying the adrenaline ride that came with making the decision to pull the trigger. “By the time we’re done he’ll be tied down nine ways till Sunday. We’ve got Hendricks and Crowe today. We’ve got everything we need.”
“Except motive,” Bosch said.
“Motive is not going to be important with a crime that is obviously the work of a psychopath,” Langwiser said. “Those jurors aren’t going to go back into their little room at the end of this and say, ‘Yeah, but what was his motive?’ They’re going to say this guy is a sick fuck and —”
Her voice dropped to a whisper when the judge entered the courtroom through the door behind the bench.
“ — we’re going to put him away.”
The judge called for the jury and after a few minutes the prosecutors were putting on their last witnesses of the trial.
The first three witnesses were film business people who had attended the premiere party on the night of Jody Krementz’s death. Each testified to having seen David Storey at the film premiere and the following party with a woman they identified from exhibit photos as Jody Krementz. The fourth witness, a screenwriter named Brent Wiggan, testified that he left the premiere party a few minutes before midnight and that he waited at the valet stand for his car along with David Storey and a woman he also identified as Jody Krementz.
“Why are you so sure it was just a few minutes before midnight, Mr. Wiggan?” Kretzler asked. “It was, after all, a party. Were you watching the clock?”
“One question at a time, Mr. Kretzler,” the judge barked.
“Sorry, Your Honor. Why are you so sure it was a few minutes before midnight, Mr. Wiggan?”
“Because I
was
watching the clock, actually,” Wiggan said. “My watch, that is. I do my writing at night. I am most productive from midnight until six. So I was watching the clock, knowing I had to get back to my house at close to midnight or I would fall behind in my work.”
“Would that also mean you were not drinking alcoholic beverages at the premiere party?”
“That is correct. I wasn’t drinking because I didn’t want to become tired or have my creativity dampened. People don’t usually drink before they go to work at a bank or as a plane pilot — well, I guess most of them don’t.”
He paused until the titters of laughter subsided. The judge looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. Wiggan looked like he was enjoying his moment of attention. Bosch started feeling uneasy.
“I don’t drink before I go on the job,” Wiggan finally continued. “Writing is a craft but it is also a job and I treat it as such.”
“So are you crystal clear in your memory and identification of who David Storey was with at a few minutes before midnight?”
“Absolutely.”
“And David Storey, you personally already knew him, correct?”
“Yes, that’s true. For several years.”
“Have you ever worked for David Storey on a film project?”
“No, I haven’t. But not for lack of trying.”
Wiggan smiled ruefully. This part of the testimony, right down to the self-deprecating comment, had been carefully planned by Kretzler earlier. He needed to limit the potential for damage to Wiggan’s testimony by walking him through the weak spots on direct.
“What do you mean by that, Mr. Wiggan?”
“Oh, I would say that in the last five years or so I have pitched film projects to David directly or to people in his production company maybe six or seven times. He never bought any of them.”
He hiked his shoulders in a sheepish gesture.
“Would you say this created a sense of animosity between you two?”
“No, not at all — at least not on my part. That’s the way the Hollywood game is played. You keep pitching and pitching and hopefully somebody eventually bites. It helps to have a thick skin, though.”
He smiled and nodded to the jury. He was giving Bosch a full set of the creeps. He wished Kretzler would end it before they lost the jury.
“Thank you, that’s all, Mr. Wiggan,” Kretzler said, apparently getting the same vibes as Bosch.
Wiggan’s face seemed to fall as he realized his moment was ending.
But then Fowkkes, who had passed on cross-examining the first three witnesses of the day, stood up and went to the lectern.
“Good morning, Mr. Wiggan.”
“Good morning.”
Wiggan raised his eyebrows in a what-do-we-have-here look.
“Just a few questions. Could you list for the jury the titles of films that you have written that have been produced?”
“Well . . . , so far, nothing’s been made. I’ve got some options and I think in a few —”
“I understand. Would you be surprised to know that in the last four years you have pitched Mr. Storey or submitted film treatments to him on a total of twenty-nine occasions, all of which were rejected?”
Wiggan’s face flushed with embarrassment.
“Well, I . . . I guess that could be true. I . . . don’t really know. I don’t keep a record of my rejections, as Mr. Storey apparently does.”
He delivered the last line in a snippish manner and Bosch almost winced. There was nothing worse than a witness on the stand who is caught in a lie and then gets defensive about it. Bosch glanced at the jury. Several of them were not looking at the witness, a sign that they were as uncomfortable as Bosch.
Fowkkes moved in for the kill.
“You were rejected by the defendant on twenty-nine occasions and yet you say to the jury that you bear him no malice, is that correct, sir?”
“That’s just business as usual in Hollywood. Ask anyone.”
“Well, Mr. Wiggan, I am asking you. Are you telling this jury that you bear this man no ill will when he is the same man who has constantly and repeatedly said to you, your work is not good enough?”
Wiggan almost mumbled his answer into the microphone.
“Yes, that is true.”
“Well, you’re a better man than me, Mr. Wiggan,” Fowkkes said. “Thank you, Your Honor. Nothing further at this time.”
Bosch could feel a good bit of the air go out of the prosecution’s balloon. With four questions and less than two minutes Fowkkes had put Wiggan’s entire credibility into question. And what was so absolutely perfect about the defense attorney’s skillful surgery was that there was little Kretzler could do on redirect to resuscitate Wiggan. The prosecutor at least knew better than to try and perhaps dig the hole deeper. He dismissed the witness and the judge called for the mid-morning break of fifteen minutes.
After the jury was out and people started working their way out of the courtroom, Kretzler leaned across Langwiser to whisper to Bosch.
“We should’ve known that this guy was going to blow up,” he said angrily.
Bosch just looked around to make sure no reporters were within earshot. He leaned toward Kretzler.
“You’re probably right,” he said. “But six weeks ago you were the one who said he would do the vetting on Wiggan. He was your responsibility, not mine. I’m going to get coffee.”
Bosch got up and left the two prosecutors sitting there.
• • •
After the break the prosecutors decided they needed to come back strong immediately after the disastrous cross-examination of Wiggan. They dropped plans to have another witness testify about seeing Storey and the victim together at the premiere party and Langwiser called a home security technician named Jamal Hendricks to the stand.
Bosch walked Hendricks in from the hallway. He was a black man wearing blue pants and a light blue uniform top, his first name embroidered over one pocket and the Lighthouse Security emblem over the other. He was planning to go to work following his testimony.
As they went through the first set of doors to the courtroom Bosch asked Hendricks in a whisper if he was nervous.
“Nah, man, piece of cake,” Hendricks replied.
On the stand Langwiser took Hendricks through his pedigree as a service technician for the home security company. She then moved specifically to his work on the security system at David Storey’s house. Hendricks said that eight months earlier he had installed a deluxe Millennium
21
system in the house on Mulholland.
“Can you tell us what some of the features are on the deluxe Millennium Twenty-one system?”
“Well, it’s top of the line. It’s got everything. Remote sensing and operation, voice recognition command software, automatic sensor polling, an innkeeper program . . . you name it and Mr. Storey got it.”
“What is an innkeeper program?”
“Essentially, it’s operation recording software. It lets you know what doors or windows have been opened and when, when the system has been turned on and off, what personal codes were used and whatnot. It keeps track of the whole system. It’s primarily used in commercial-industrial applications but Mr. Storey wanted a commercial system and it came included.”
“So he didn’t specifically ask for the innkeeper program?”
“I don’t know about that. I didn’t sell him the system. I only installed it.”
“But he could have had this program and not known about it.”
“Anything’s possible, I guess.”
“Now did there come a time when Detective Bosch called Lighthouse Security and asked for a technician to meet him at Mr. Storey’s home?”
“Yeah, he made the call and it was given to me because I had installed the system. I met him there at the house. This was after Mr. Storey had been arrested and was in lockup. Mr. Storey’s lawyer was there, too.”
“When was that exactly?”
“That was November eleventh.”
“What did Detective Bosch ask you to do?”
“Well, first he showed me a search warrant. It allowed him to collect information from the system’s chip.”
“And did you help him with that?”
“Yeah. I downloaded the innkeeper data file and printed it out for him.”
Langwiser first introduced the search warrant — the third executed during the investigation — as an exhibit, then she introduced the printout Hendricks had just testified about.

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