Switchblade: An Original Story (2 page)

The knife was most intriguing to Bosch. Though ostensibly cleaned by the killer and left submerged in contaminated water for an estimated nineteen hours—the span from time of death to discovery of the body by a city inspector and then the draining of the sink by a crime scene tech—there was still a chance that microscopic DNA could be found on the weapon. The knife was cheaply made and stamped
H
ECHO
EN
M
EXICO
on the blade. It had been found in the closed position, meaning sometime between the murder and the weapon’s abandonment it had been closed, presumably by the killer. Bosch pointed this out to the DNA intake tech he brought it to and asked him to check the channel in the knife’s handle where the blade was hidden when not extended.

A week later Bosch received a call at his desk from a criminalist at the crime lab. His name was Jack Hardy and he said he had been given the task of disassembling the switchblade from the Ratliff case.

“I got good news for you, Detective,” he said. “We found DNA in the handle.”

“That’s great. Is there enough for comparison?”

“We think so. We’re going to put together a package for the DOJ.”

Bosch knew that all DNA analysis in criminal matters was handled by the California Department of Justice lab in Sacramento. The wait for results could be interminable.

“How long before we hear back?” he asked, even though he suspected he would not receive an encouraging response.

“Six months,” Hardy said. “Three if we’re lucky.”

“The guy who I think did this comes up on his first parole hearing on another murder in five months. He’s up at San Quentin. The way they let people out these days, I’d hate to see this guy get out before we can hit him with this.”

“I hear you. I’ll see what I can do to speed things along.”

The regional lab in L.A. had to be one of the DOJ lab’s biggest and most important customers. People knew people between the facilities and sometimes favors could be done. Bosch hoped for the best, but that was all he could do. He had taken the Ratliff case as far as he could take it. Now it was time to wait on it while he worked other cases. This was the routine in the Open-Unsolved Unit. A lot of irons in the fire at all times. Bosch waited for the science to deliver while he moved on to a different case.

The next time Emily Robertson came through the squad room with that week’s sorting, Bosch updated her on where things stood with the case. He said it was a long shot but at least they had a shot.

She seemed pleased. She even called him Harry after he gave her the update.

It took the DOJ lab four months to return a verdict. DNA from the switchblade had been matched to two people: William Ratliff and Patrick Sewell.

Bosch could not have asked for a better result. Blood from both the victim and the suspect were found on the murder weapon. It looked like a slam dunk. Bosch took what he had to the District Attorney’s Office to request that a murder charge be lodged against Sewell. He spoke with a deputy DA named Lionel Dupree, who was in the pool of prosecutors assigned to cold cases because of the unique challenges they posed at trial. The Lion, as Dupree was called by the cops in OU, did not call it a slam dunk.

“It’s not even a layup,” he told Bosch. “Science can be challenged—how was that switchblade stored? how many people had access to it over twenty years? what about the deterioration of the specimen while it was in the sink?—and don’t get me started on test contamination up at DOJ. You get a good lawyer and there could be a hundred challenges to this, Harry. And believe me, when it comes to murder cases with death-penalty risk, they’re all good lawyers.”

“So you’re not going to file?” Bosch said incredulously. “I thought you were ‘the Lion’—not afraid of any case.”

“No, I didn’t say I won’t file. And I’m not afraid of this or any other case. I just want to be bulletproof when we go into court. I want more than DNA.”

“So what do I do? The case is old. This is what I’ve got.”

“First of all, you go up to the Q and see this guy, see if you can get an admission. And second—and this is the big one—find the witness.”

“What witness?”

“Whoever it was who called in and put this guy’s name on this. They have to have seen or heard something. They gave Sewell’s name and they were right. Find me that caller and then we probably have a slam dunk here.”

Bosch nodded reluctantly. He knew the Lion was right when it came to making cases but sometimes you had what you had and you needed to roll the dice. He left the DA’s Office disappointed and knowing the case might stall out. For Dupree, as long as Sewell was in prison on the other killing, it didn’t make sense to move ahead with a risky prosecution.

One week after Bosch met with Lionel Dupree he was sitting in a visiting room in the Adjustment Center at the California State Prison at San Quentin. The AC was so named in the nineteenth century because it was the building where new inmates were oriented to the prison’s rules and routines, and it was now also where law enforcement interviews took place. Patrick Sewell was taken from his job in the prison’s mattress factory and brought to Bosch for the interview. Bosch had had a long time to consider how he would play the inmate and had even written out a script which he’d edited and then committed to memory.

Sewell was surprisingly small for a killer of men. Bosch had his file on the table in front of him and knew he was exactly five foot six and 130 pounds. He had brown hair and glasses and had a thin smile on his face. It was a phony sort of smile designed to cloak true intentions. He wore a baggy blue shirt and pants, the color status meaning he had achieved a level of trust inside the prison that allowed him certain freedoms within its twenty-five-foot stone walls. It also meant that he was on a pathway toward parole. Bosch’s script would play on that.

“Patrick, I’m Detective Harry Bosch from the Los Angeles Police Department. How are you doing today?”

Sewell paused before speaking. He presumably had no idea what Bosch was there for.

“I’m doing okay,” he finally said.

“Good. How are you set for your parole hearing next month?”

Sewell shrugged.

“I’m ready, I guess.”

“The captain tells me you’ve been a model prisoner. You must want to get out very badly.”

“I don’t think there’s anybody who wants to be here.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s true, Patrick. You know if they turn you down, you don’t get another shot for two years. Then if they turn you down again, it’s four years. Best chance is the first shot.”

“What do you want, Mr. LAPD?”

“What I want is to ask you about some years and some specific dates and to see if you can remember where you were and what you might’ve seen during those times.”

“What if I don’t want to answer?”

“You don’t have to. But here’s the trick. If you don’t answer me, that’s called being uncooperative. And that’s going to go in your jacket, and those three parole board members next month are going to know it. Not sure you want that, since I see you got fifteen years in already.”

“Sixteen.”

“My mistake. Sixteen.”

“What dates are you talking about?”

“Well, first let’s do this right.”

Bosch reached into his suit pocket to retrieve his mini voice recorder. He put it down on the table between them and turned it on. He then identified himself and Sewell as well as their location and the date of the recording. Then, reading from a card he had also pulled from a pocket, he gave Sewell the Miranda warning, notifying him of his right to an attorney during the questioning that was to follow. Sewell, wanting to be cooperative, waived his rights and agreed to answer questions. Bosch went right to the script he had committed to memory.

“Mr. Sewell, have you ever been in Los Angeles?”

“Of course. Many times.”

“Did you ever live there?”

“Not really. I stayed with friends every now and then but I never paid rent or anything like that.”

“When were the times you stayed with friends?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to remember after so many years. It was on and off.”

“Was it near the time of your arrest and incarceration in 1996?”

“It could’ve been. I don’t remember.”

“What about before that, earlier in the nineties?”

“I’m sure I was there. In and out.”

“Did you know an individual named William Ratliff? He was known as Billy by his friends.”

“Who now?”

“William Ratliff. He went by Billy.”

“No, I didn’t know anybody who went by Billy.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Where’d you live in 1992?”

“’Ninety-two? That’s way back. In ’92 I was still living part of the time in my mother’s place in Tustin.”

“What about the other part of the time?”

“Uh, you know, around. I’d stay with friends. You know, in and out.”

“When would you go to Los Angeles?”

“Los Angeles? Like on weekends every now and then.”

“Did you drive up there?”

“Yeah, I had a car.”

“So you were in Los Angeles in 1992?”

“I don’t remember exactly. It’s a long—”

“Ever in Hollywood?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’ve read your application for parole.”

“You’re allowed to do that?”

“Yes, Patrick, the department of probation and parole allowed me to see it. And I see in the candidate’s comments section that you take full responsibility for the crime that put you up here.”

“Yes. I told them I’m sorry.”

“So you are admitting you did it? At your trial you denied it all the way.”

Bosch was drawing Sewell into a corner. In order to get paroled, he had to acknowledge his crimes and hope that his confession would be seen by the board as part of his rehabilitation and redemption.

“I am admitting that I had poor self-control and that I acted out. It cost an innocent man his life and for that I am very sorry.”

“Where did you buy the switchblade you killed that innocent man with?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. Where did you buy the switchblade? You killed the victim in ’96 with a switchblade. Daniel Hunter, a gay man you picked up in a bar. You went to his apartment and stabbed him repeatedly with a switchblade and you admitted as much in your application for parole.”

Bosch paused. Sewell didn’t say anything.

“Now, I want to know where you got the switchblade, Patrick. You told me you were cooperating here.”

The pause continued. Sewell eyes stared cold and hard at Bosch because he knew it was one thing that could not be recorded on Bosch’s micro-recorder and used against him.

“In TJ,” he finally said. “They sold them there cheap.”

“Tijuana,” Bosch said. “Did you go there a lot?”

“Not too much. When I got the urge.”

“The urge to travel or the urge to buy a switchblade?”

“The urge for authentic Mexican food.”

“When did you buy the knife?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you buy more than one down there, Patrick?”

“Just the one, as far as I remember.”

“You sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Did you stab Billy Ratliff with a switchblade you bought in Mexico?”

“No, don’t be crazy. The answer is no.”

“Were you in Los Angeles on February 9, 1992?”

“How am I supposed to remember something like that?”

“Yes or no?”

“I don’t remember!”

“There is a witness who tells us you killed Billy Ratliff.”

“That is bullshit!”

“No, he says you killed him. You stabbed him with a switchblade just like you stabbed Daniel Hunter. Both of them gay, both of them stabbed with a cheap switchblade from Tijuana. It was you.”

“No, you’re wrong and you can’t prove a thing. What witness? There was no witness.”

“Yeah, how do you know there was no witness?”

Sewell realized he was skirting too close to an admission.

“Look,” he said. “You’re trying to pin this on me because I got a parole hearing coming up. I’m trying to cooperate but you’re accusing me and there isn’t one shred of evidence against me.”

“Depends on what you consider a shred.”

The convict stared at Bosch for a long moment.

“And what’s that mean?”

“It means the smallest shred in the world connects you to Ratliff. We’ve got DNA. On the murder weapon. You stabbed him so hard your fingers slipped over the hilt and you cut yourself. Just like with Hunter.”

Sewell shook his head.

“You are lying. I wasn’t even there.”

“The science doesn’t lie. You can forget parole, Sewell. You can forget everything. This time we’re going for the death penalty. You want to save yourself from that, then you talk. You tell everything. You’ll never get out of here but you’ll be alive.”

“Fuck you, liar. You wouldn’t even be here if you had a case. I’m out of here.”

He stood up and started calling for the guard.

Before Bosch left the Adjustment Center, he got the names of every prisoner who had ever shared a cell with Sewell. He figured the tip to the sorter had to have come from someone he had bragged to about his crimes. Bosch would start with the cell mates.

The next month, Sewell was denied parole after the three-member board heard a presentation from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office that included graphic details of the murder of Daniel Hunter and also news that Sewell’s DNA had been linked to a homicide being worked as a cold case in Los Angeles.

The denial meant Sewell would remain safely behind prison walls for at least the next two years. This took some of the urgency off Bosch but he still worked the case as a hobby, slowly making his way down the list of forty-one cell mates Sewell had had over his years at San Quentin. Some were dead but most were incarcerated in other prisons and jails, which made them easy to get to. Bosch sometimes piggybacked interviews with them while conducting interviews on other cases that came and went.

Ten months passed before Bosch checked the last name off the list. He had found no one who made the call to the Open-Unsolved Unit’s public line. He visited the Lion at the DA’s Office to try to persuade him to go ahead with the case, even though DNA would be the only hard evidence. He argued that the circumstantial evidence—the similarities between the Hunter and Ratliff murders, Sewell’s evasiveness during the San Quentin interview—would help win the day in court, but Dupree was unmoved. He stuck to the argument that as long as Sewell was in prison, there was no need to mount a potentially risky and costly prosecution. He fortified this with the fact that Sewell’s first parole request had been denied, an indicator he was not going anywhere, and the hope that the longer they waited the better the chance that the anonymous caller might come to light.