A Darkness More Than Night (22 page)

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Authors: Michael Connelly

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BOOK: A Darkness More Than Night
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“Did Ms. Gilley know when Ms. Krementz returned that night?”
“No. Ms. Gilley left the house shortly after Ms. Krementz went on her date and spent the night elsewhere. Consequently, she did not know when her roommate returned home. It was when Ms. Gilley returned to the house at eleven
A.M.
on October thirteenth that she discovered Ms. Krementz’s body.”
“What was the name of the movie which was premiered the night before?”
“It was called
Dead Point.
”
“And who directed it?”
“David Storey.”
Langwiser waited through a long pause before looking at her watch and then up at the judge.
“Your Honor,” she said, “I am going to move into a new line of questioning now with Detective Bosch. If appropriate, this might be the best time to break for the day.”
Houghton pulled back the baggy black sleeve of his robe and looked at his watch. Bosch looked at his. It was a quarter to four.
“Okay, Ms. Langwiser, we’ll adjourn until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Houghton told Bosch he could step down from the witness stand. He then admonished the jurors not to read newspaper accounts or watch TV reports on the trial. Everyone stood as the jurors filed out. Bosch, who was now standing next to Langwiser at the prosecution table, glanced over at the defense side. David Storey was looking at him. His face betrayed no emotion at all. But Bosch thought he saw something in his pale blue eyes. He wasn’t sure but he thought it was mirth.
Bosch was the first to look away.

 

 

20
After the courtroom emptied, Bosch conferred with Langwiser and Kretzler about their missing witness.
“Anything yet?” Kretzler asked. “Depending on how long John Reason keeps you up there, we’re going to need her tomorrow afternoon or the next morning.”
“Nothing yet,” Bosch said. “But I’ve got something in the works. In fact, I better get going.”
“I don’t like this,” Kretzler said. “This could blow up. If she’s not coming in, there’s a reason. I’ve never been a hundred percent on her story.”
“Storey could have gotten to her,” Bosch offered.
“We need her,” Langwiser said. “It shows pattern. You have to find her.”
“I’m on it.”
He got up from the table to leave.
“Good luck, Harry,” Langwiser said. “And, by the way, so far I think you’re doing very well up there.”
Bosch nodded.
“The calm before the storm.”
On his way down the hall to the elevators Bosch was approached by one of the reporters. He didn’t know his name but he recognized him from the press seats in the courtroom.
“Detective Bosch?”
Bosch kept walking.
“Look, I’ve told everybody, I’m not commenting until the trial is over. I’m sorry. You’ll have to get —”
“No, that’s okay. I just wanted to see if you hooked up with Terry McCaleb.”
Bosch stopped and looked at the reporter.
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday. He was looking for you here.”
“Oh, yeah, I saw him. You know Terry?”
“Yeah, I wrote a book a few years ago about the bureau. I met him then. Before he got the transplant.”
Bosch nodded and was about to move on when the reporter put out his hand.
“Jack McEvoy.”
Bosch reluctantly shook his hand. He recognized the name. Five years earlier the bureau had tracked a serial cop killer to L.A., where it was believed he was about to strike his next victim — a Hollywood homicide detective named Ed Thomas. The bureau had used information from McEvoy, a reporter for the
Rocky Mountain News
in Denver, to track the so-called Poet and Thomas’s life was never threatened. He was retired from the force now and running a bookshop down in Orange County.
“Hey, I remember you,” Bosch said. “Ed Thomas is a friend of mine.”
Both men appraised each other.
“You’re covering this thing?” Bosch asked, an obvious question.
“Yeah. For the
New Times
and
Vanity Fair.
I’m thinking about a book, too. So when it’s all over, maybe we can talk.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Unless you’re doing something with Terry on it.”
“With Terry? No, that was something else yesterday. No book.”
“Okay, then keep me in mind.”
McEvoy dug into his pocket for his wallet and then removed a business card.
“I mostly work out of my home in Laurel Canyon. Feel free to give me a call if you want.”
Bosch held the card up.
“Okay. I gotta go. See you around, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
Bosch walked over and pushed the button for an elevator. He looked at the card again while he waited and thought about Ed Thomas. He then put the card into the pocket of his suit jacket.
Before the elevator came he looked down the hallway and saw McEvoy was still in the hallway, now talking to Rudy Tafero, the defense’s investigator. Tafero was a big man and he was leaning forward, close to McEvoy, as if it was some sort of conspiratorial rendezvous. McEvoy was writing in a notebook.
The elevator opened and Bosch stepped on. He watched them until the doors closed.
• • •
Bosch took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the hill and dropped down into Hollywood ahead of the evening traffic. At Sunset he took a right and pulled to the curb a few blocks into West Hollywood. He fed the meter and went into the small, drab white office building across Sunset from a strip bar. The two-story courtyard building catered to small production companies. They were small offices with small overheads. The companies lived from movie to movie. In between there was no need for opulent offices and space.
Bosch checked his watch and saw that he was right on time. It was quarter to five and the audition was set for five. He took the stairs up to the second floor and went through a door with a sign that said
NUFF SAID PRODUCTIONS.
It was a three-room suite, one of the biggest in the building. Bosch had been there before and knew the layout: a waiting room with a secretary’s desk, the office of Bosch’s friend, Albert “Nuff” Said, and then a conference room. A woman behind the secretary’s desk looked up at Bosch as he stepped in.
“I’m here to see Mr. Said. My name’s Harry Bosch.”
She nodded and picked up the phone and punched a number. Bosch could hear it beep in the other room and recognized Said’s voice answering.
“It’s Harry Bosch,” the secretary said.
Bosch heard Said order her to send him in. He headed that way before she was off the phone.
“Go on in,” she said to his back.
Bosch stepped into an office that was furnished simply with a desk, two chairs, a black leather couch and a television/video console. The walls were crowded with framed one-sheet posters advertising Said’s movies and other mementos, such as the back panels of the producers’ chairs with the names of the movies printed on them. Bosch had known Said at least fifteen years, ever since the older man had hired him as a technical adviser on a movie thinly based on one of Bosch’s cases. They had kept in touch sporadically over the ensuing decade, Said usually calling Bosch when he had a technical question about a police procedure he was using in a movie. Most of Said’s productions were never seen on the silver screen. They were television and cable movies.
Albert Said stood up behind the desk and Bosch extended his hand.
“Hey, Nuff, howzit going?”
“Going fine, my friend.”
He pointed to the television.
“I watched your fine performance on
Court TV
today. Bravo.”
He politely clapped his hands. Bosch waved the demonstration off and looked at his watch again.
“Thanks. So are we all set here?”
“I believe so. Marjorie will have her wait for me in the conference room. You can take it from there.”
“I appreciate this, Nuff. Let me know what I can do to square it.”
“You can be in my next movie. You have a real presence, my friend. I watched the whole thing today. I taped it if you would like to see for yourself.”
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ll have the time anyway. What have you got going these days?”
“Oh, you know, waiting for the light to turn green. I have a project I think is about to go with overseas financing. It is about this cop who gets sent to prison and the trauma of being stripped of his badge and his respect and everything gives him amnesia. And so there he is in prison and he can’t remember which guys he put there and which ones he didn’t. He’s in a constant fight to survive. The one convict who befriends him turns out to be a serial killer he sent there in the first place. It’s a thriller, Harry. What do you think? Steven Segal is reading the script.”
Said’s bushy black eyebrows were arched into sharp points on his forehead. He was clearly excited by the premise of the movie.
“I don’t know, Nuff,” Bosch said. “I think it’s been done before.”
“Everything’s been done before. But what do you think?”
Bosch was saved by the bell. In the silence after Said’s question they both could hear the secretary talking to someone in the next room. Then the speakerphone on Said’s desk beeped and the secretary said, “Ms. Crowe is here. She will be waiting in the conference room.”
Bosch nodded at Said.
“Thanks, Nuff,” he whispered. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ll let you know if I need any help.”
He turned to the office door but then went back to the desk and put out his hand.
“I may have to split kind of fast. So I’ll say good-bye. Good luck with that project. Sounds like another winner.”
They shook hands.
“Yes, we shall see,” Said said.
Bosch left the office and crossed a small hallway and entered the conference room. There was a square, glass-topped table at center with a chair on each side. Annabelle Crowe sat in the chair on the side opposite the door. She was studying a black-and-white photograph of herself as Bosch entered. She looked up with a bright smile and perfect teeth. The smile held for a little longer than a second and then crashed off her face like a Malibu mudslide.
“What — what are you doing here?”
“Hello, Annabelle, how’ve you been?”
“This is an audition — you can’t just —”
“You’re right, this is an audition. I am auditioning you for the role of witness in a murder trial.”
The woman stood up. Her head shot and a résumé slipped off the table to the floor.
“You can’t just — what is going on here?”
“You know what is going on. You moved and left no forwarding. Your parents wouldn’t help. Your agent wouldn’t help me. The only way I could get to you was to set up an audition. Now sit down and we’re going to talk about where you’ve been and why you’re ducking the trial.”
“So there is no part?”
Bosch almost laughed. She still didn’t get it.
“No, no part.”
“And they’re not remaking
Chinatown?
”
This time he did laugh but quickly covered.
“One of these days they’ll get around to it. But you’re too young for the part and I’m no Jake Gittes. Sit down, please.”
Bosch started to pull out the chair opposite hers. But she refused to sit down. She looked very put out. She was a beautiful young woman with a face that often got her what she wanted. But not this time.
“I said sit down,” Bosch said sternly. “You have to understand something here, Miss Crowe. You broke the law when you did not respond to a court-issued subpoena to appear today. That means if I want, I can just place you under arrest and we can talk about this in lockup. Or the alternative is that we sit down here because they’re letting us use the nice room and talk about this in a civilized manner. Your choice, Annabelle.”
She dropped back into her chair. Her mouth was a thin, tight line. The lipstick she had carefully painted on for a casting session was already starting to crack and wear. Bosch studied her for a long moment before beginning.
“Who got to you, Annabelle?”
She looked at him sharply.
“Look,” she said, “I was scared, okay? I still am. David Storey is a powerful man. He has some scary people behind him.”
Bosch leaned across the table.
“Are you saying you were threatened by him? By them?”
“No, I am not saying that. They didn’t need to threaten me. I know the picture.”
Bosch leaned back away from her and quietly studied her. Her eyes moved everywhere around the room but to him. The traffic noise from out on Sunset filtered through the room’s one closed window. Somewhere in the building a toilet was flushed. Finally, she looked at Bosch.

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