Michael Connelly (111 page)

“Your name is Faraday,” Bosch said, as if speaking to a child.

“Yeah, what about it, Lieutenant?”

Bosch smiled. He had been made by a bum. All except for the rank. “Nothing about it. I just heard that’s what it was. I also
heard you were a lawyer once.”

“I still am. I’m just not practicing.”

He turned and watched a jail bus go by on Spring, heading to the courthouse. It was full of angry faces looking out through
the black wire windows. Somebody by one of the back windows made Bosch as a cop, too, and stuck his middle index finger up
through the wire. Bosch smiled back at him.

“My name was Thomas Faraday. But now I prefer Tommy Faraway.”

“What happened to make you stop practicing law?”

Tommy looked back at him with milky eyes.

“Justice is what happened. Thanks for the smoke.” He walked away then, cup in hand, and headed toward City Hall. Maybe that
was his turf, too.

• • •

After the break, Chandler called a lab analyst from the coroner’s office named Victor Amado. He was a very small and bookish-looking
man with eyes that shifted from the judge to the jury as he walked to the witness chair. He was balding badly, though he seemed
to be no more than twenty-eight. Bosch remembered that four years earlier he had all his hair and members of the task force
referred to him as The Kid. He knew Belk was going to call Amado as a witness if Chandler didn’t.

Belk leaned over and whispered that Chandler was following a good guy–bad guy pattern by alternating police witnesses with
her sympathetic witnesses.

“She’ll probably put one of the daughters up there after Amado,” he said. “As a strategy, it is completely unoriginal.”

Bosch didn’t mention that Belk’s trust-us-we’re-the-cops defense had been around as long as the civil suit.

Amado testified in painstaking detail about how he had been given all of the bottles and compacts containing makeup that were
found in Church’s Hyperion apartment and had then traced them to specific victims of the Dollmaker. He said he had come up
with nine separate lots or groupings of makeup — mascara, blush, eyeliner, lipstick, etc. Each lot was connected through chemical
analysis to samples taken from the faces of the victims. This was further corroborated by detectives who interviewed relatives
and friends to determine what brands the victims were known to use. It all matched up, Amado said. And in one instance, he
added, an eyelash found on a mascara brush in Church’s bathroom cabinet was identified as having come from the second victim.

“What about the two victims no matching makeup was found for?” Chandler asked.

“That was a mystery. We never found their makeup.”

“In fact, with the exception of the eyelash that was allegedly found and matched to victim number two, you can’t be one hundred
percent sure that the makeup police did supposedly find in the apartment came from the victims, correct?”

“This stuff is mass produced and sold around the world. So there is a lot of it out there, but I would guess that the chances
of nine different exact combinations of makeup being found like that by mere coincidence are astronomical.”

“I didn’t ask you to guess, Mr. Amado. Please answer the question I asked.”

After flinching at being dressed down, Amado said, “The answer is we can’t be one hundred percent sure, that is correct.”

“Okay, now tell the jury about the DNA testing you did that connected Norman Church to the eleven killings.”

“There wasn’t any done. There —”

“Just answer the question, Mr. Amado. What about serology tests, connecting Mr. Church to the crimes?”

“There were none.”

“Then it was the makeup comparison that was the clincher — the linchpin in the determination that Mr. Church was the Dollmaker?”

“Well, it was for me. I don’t know about the detectives. My report said —”

“I’m sure for the detectives it was the bullet that killed him that was the clincher.”

“Objection,” Belk yelled angrily as he stood. “Your Honor, she can’t —”

“Ms. Chandler,” Judge Keyes boomed. “I have warned you both about exactly this sort of thing. Why would you go and say something
you know full well is prejudicial and out of order?”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“Well, it’s a little late for apologies. We’ll discuss this matter after the jury goes home for the day.”

The judge then instructed the jurors to disregard her comment. But Bosch knew it had been a carefully thought out gambit by
Chandler. The jurors would now see her even more as the underdog. Even the judge was against her — which he really wasn’t.
And they might be distracted, thinking about what just happened, when Belk stepped up to repair Amado’s testimony.

“Nothing further, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

“Mr. Belk,” the judge said.

Don’t say just a few questions again, Bosch thought as his lawyer moved to the lectern.

“Just a few questions, Mr. Amado,” Belk said. “Plaintiff’s counsel mentioned DNA and serology tests and you said they had
not been done. Why is that?”

“Well, because there was nothing to test. No semen was ever recovered from any of the bodies. The killer had used a condom.
Without samples to attempt to match to Mr. Church’s DNA or blood, there was not much point in running tests. We would have
the victims’ but nothing to compare it to.”

Belk drew a line with his pen through a question written on his pad.

“If there was no recovery of semen or sperm, how do you know these women were raped or even had engaged in consensual sexual
activity?”

“The autopsies of all eleven of the victims showed vaginal bruising, much more than is considered usual or even possible from
consensual sex. On two of the victims there was even tearing in the vaginal wall. The victims were brutally raped, in my estimation.”

“But these women came from walks of life where sexual activity was common and frequent, even ‘rough sex’, if you will. Two
of them performed in pornographic videos. How can you be sure they were sexually assaulted against their will?”

“The bruising was such that it would have been very painful, especially for the two with vaginal tears. Hemorrhaging was considered
perimortem, meaning at the time of death. The deputy coroners who performed these autopsies unanimously concluded these women
were raped.”

Belk drew another line on his pad, flipped the page and came up with a new question. He was doing well with Amado, Bosch thought.
Better than Money had. It may have been a mistake for her to have called him as a witness.

“How do you know that the killer used a condom?” Belk asked. “Couldn’t these women have been raped with an object and that
account for the lack of semen?”

“That could have happened and it could account for some of the damage. But there was clear evidence in five of the cases that
they had had sex with a man wearing a condom.”

“And what was that?”

“We did rape kits. There was —”

“Hold it a second, Mr. Amado. What is a rape kit?”

“It’s a protocol for collecting evidence from bodies of people that may have been the victims of rape. In the case of a woman,
we take vaginal and anal swabs, we comb the pubic area looking for foreign pubic hair, procedures such as that. We also take
samples of blood and hair from the victim in case there is a call for comparison to evidence found on a suspect. It’s collected
together in an evidence kit.”

“Okay. Before I interrupted there, you were going to tell us about the evidence found in five of the victims that was indicative
of sex with a man who wore a condom.”

“Yes, we did the rape kits each time we got a Dollmaker victim. And there was a foreign substance found in vaginal samplings
in five of the victims. It was the same material in each of the women.”

“What was it, Mr. Amado?”

“It was identified as a condom lubricant.”

“Was this material something that could be identified to a specific brand and style of condom?”

Looking at Belk, Bosch could see the heavy man was chomping at the bit. Amado was answering each question slowly and each
time Bosch could see that Belk could barely wait for the answer before plowing ahead with a new question. Belk was on a roll.

“Yes,” Amado said. “We identified the product. It was from a Trojan-Enz lubricated condom with special receptacle end.”

Looking at the court reporter, Amado said, “That’s spelled E-N-Z.”

“And that was the same for all five samples received from the five bodies?” Belk asked.

“Yes it was.”

“I am going to ask you a hypothetical question. Assuming that the attacker of eleven women used the same brand of lubricated
condom, how could you account for lubrication being found in the vaginal sampling of only five victims?”

“I believe that a number of factors could be involved. Such as the intensity of the victim’s struggle. But essentially it
would be just a matter of how much of the lubricant came off the condom and stayed in the vagina.”

“When police officers brought you the various containers of makeup from the Hyperion apartment rented by Norman Church for
analysis, did they bring anything else?”

“Yes they did.”

“What was that?”

“A box of Trojan-Enz lubricated condoms with special receptacle ends.”

“How many condoms did the box hold?”

“Twelve separately packaged condoms.”

“How many were still in the box when the police delivered it to you?”

“There were three left.”

“Nothing further.”

Belk returned to the defense table with a triumphant spring in his walk.

“A moment, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

Bosch watched her open a fat file full of police documents. She leafed through the pages and took out a short stack of documents
held together with a paper clip. She read the top one quickly and then held it up to leaf through the rest. Bosch could see
the top one was the protocol list from a rape kit. She was reading the protocols from all eleven victims.

Belk leaned over to him and whispered, “She’s about to step into some deep shit. I was going to bring this up later, during
your testimony.”

“Ms. Chandler?” the judge intoned.

She jumped up.

“Yes, Your Honor, I’m ready. I have a quick redirect of Mr. Amado.”

She brought the stack of protocols with her to the lectern, read the last two and then looked at the coroner’s analyst.

“Mr. Amado, you mentioned that part of the rape kit consisted of combing for foreign pubic hairs, do I have that right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain that procedure a little more?”

“Well, basically, the comb is passed through the pubic hair of the victim and it collects unattached hairs. Oftentimes, this
unattached hair is from the victim’s attacker, or possibly other sexual partners.”

“How’s it get there?”

Amado’s face flushed to a crimson hue.

“Well, uh, it — uh, during sex … there is I guess what you call friction between the bodies?”

“I am asking the questions, Mr. Amado. You are answering.”

There was quiet tittering from the gallery seats. Bosch felt embarrassed for Amado and thought that his own face might be
turning red.

“Yes, well, there is friction,” Amado said. “And this causes some transference. Loose pubic hair from one person can be transferred
to that of the other.”

“I see,” Chandler said. “Now, you as coordinator of the Dollmaker evidence from the coroner’s office were familiar with the
rape kits of all eleven victims, correct?”

“Yes.”

“With how many of the victims did the findings include foreign pubic hair?”

Bosch understood what was happening now and realized that Belk was right. Chandler was walking into the buzz saw.

“All of them,” Amado answered.

Bosch saw Deborah Church raise her head and look sharply at Chandler at the lectern. Then she looked over at Bosch and their
eyes met. She quickly looked away but Bosch knew. She, too, knew what was about to happen. Because she, too, knew her late
husband the way Bosch had on that last night. She knew what he looked like naked.

“Ah, all of them,” Chandler said. “Now, can you tell the jury how many of these pubic hairs found on these women were analyzed
and identified as having been from the body of Norman Church?”

“None of them were from Norman Church.”

“Thank you.”

Belk was up and moving to the lectern before Chandler had time to remove her pad and the rape kit protocols. Bosch watched
her sit down and saw the widow Church lean to her and desperately begin whispering. Bosch saw Chandler’s eyes go dead. She
held up her hand to tell the widow she had said enough and then leaned back and exhaled.

“Now, let’s clear something up first,” Belk said. “Mr. Amado, you said you found pubic hairs on all of the eleven victims.
Were these hairs all from the same man?”

“No. We found a multitude of samples. In most cases, what looked like hair from possibly two or three men on each victim.”

“What did you attribute this to?”

“Their lifestyle. We knew these were women with multiple sexual partners.”

“Did you analyze these samples to determine if there were common hairs? In other words, whether hair from one man was found
on each of the victims.”

“No, we did not. There was a huge amount of evidence collected in these cases and manpower dictated that we focus on evidence
that would help identify a killer. Because we had so many different samples, it was determined that this was evidence that
would be held and then used to link or clear a suspect, once that suspect was in custody.”

“I see, well, then once Norman Church had been killed and was identified as the Dollmaker, did you then match any of the hairs
from the victims to him?”

“We did not.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Mr. Church had shaved his body hair. There was no pubic hair to match.”

“Why would he have done that?”

Chandler objected on the grounds that Amado could not answer for Church and the judge sustained it. But Bosch knew it didn’t
matter. Everybody in the courtroom knew why Church had shaved himself — so he wouldn’t leave pubic hairs behind as evidence.