The Crossing (6 page)

Since her husband was a law enforcement officer, several security measures had been installed in the home, including an alarm system and multiple locks on all doors. The killer had gained entrance through the window of a home office, removing a screen and leaving it leaning against the back wall of the house, then jimmying the lock on the window. The victim apparently had not set the alarm system and her husband said that she rarely did so despite his often-repeated request that she set it when he was working at night and she was home alone.

All of this and other details added up to the profile of a suspect who was opportunistic and relentless as a predator. Parks had gone to the Pavilions supermarket on Santa Monica Boulevard on the evening of her murder. For several days the investigators scoured security video from the store and shopping plaza where it was located, tracking Parks’s visit and hoping to find the point of intersection between victim and predator. But nothing came of it. In the store, Parks saw and acknowledged several acquaintances whom she knew socially or from her government work. But all of them were checked out and eventually cleared, either through voluntary DNA comparison or otherwise.

It all added up to spinning wheels, but they were wheels that needed to be spun. Bosch’s review of the first eighty pages of the chrono left him with the belief that Lazlo Cornell and Tara Schmidt had conducted a very thorough investigation—one that he would be proud to have put his name on himself.

And all of it was for naught. That is, until the twenty-seventh day of the investigation when they received a letter from the California Department of Justice informing them that the DNA sample they had submitted to the state’s CODIS database had been matched to a convicted offender named Da’Quan Foster.

Until that moment, neither Cornell nor Schmidt had ever heard of Da’Quan Foster in regard to Parks or any other case. But they started planning for when they would eventually meet him. He was placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance to see if he made any moves that could be useful in his prosecution or threatened to harm another woman. Meanwhile, he was backgrounded and the investigation proceeded under the tightest security so that no word would leak to the media or to the husband of the victim.

Eleven days after the DNA match came in from the state, the two lead investigators entered the artist’s studio where Foster was alone, having just finished teaching a small class of children about primary colors. Leimert Park was in the City of Los Angeles. The investigators were accompanied by two uniformed LAPD officers from the South Bureau Gang Unit. Cornell and Schmidt asked Foster if he would accompany them to the Homicide Unit, where they wanted to ask him questions.

Da’Quan Foster agreed.

Bosch looked up and realized he had worked through the lunch rush in the restaurant. His check was sitting on the edge of the table and he had not noticed it. Feeling sheepish about not turning the table over during lunch, he put thirty dollars down on the table for the ten-dollar check, then gathered the reports back together and headed out. He cursed his luck when he found a parking ticket under the Cherokee’s windshield wiper. He had paid for two hours on the meter but had been in the restaurant for two and a half. He took the ticket from beneath the rubber blade and shoved it into his pocket. He never had to worry about parking tickets when he was driving a city car, when he carried a badge. It was another reminder of how his life had changed in the last six months. He used to feel like an outsider with an insider’s job. From now on he would be a full-time outsider.

For some reason Bosch didn’t want to go home to finish reading the chrono and the rest of the discovery reports. He felt as though reviewing the case at the dining room table where he had worked on so many cases as an LAPD homicide detective would be some kind of betrayal. He took Third Street out of downtown and out to West Hollywood. Before reading further into the chrono log, he wanted to drive by the house where Lexi Parks had been murdered. He thought it would be good to get out of the paper and to see some of the physical touchstones of the case.

The home was located on Orlando south of Melrose in a neighborhood of modest bungalows. Bosch pulled to the opposite curb and studied the house. It was almost entirely hidden by a tall privacy hedge with an arched entry cut through it. He could see the front door beyond the passage. There was a
FOR SALE
sign posted in front of the hedge. Bosch wondered how difficult it would be to sell a house where a brutal murder had recently occurred. He decided that living in the house where your wife had been the victim of that murder would be even more difficult.

His phone buzzed and he answered while still staring at the house.

“Bosch,” he said.

“It’s me,” Haller said. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going.”

“You still reading the discovery material?”

“About halfway through.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I’m still reading.”

“I just thought maybe you might have—”

“Look, don’t push me on this, Mick. I’m doing what I have to do. If I want to take it further when I’m finished, I’ll tell you. If I don’t, I’ll drop all of this stuff back with you.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Good. I’ll catch you later.”

Bosch disconnected. He continued to look at the house. He noticed that there was a
BEWARE OF DOG
sign posted in a planter beside the front door. He had not read anything in the discovery so far that mentioned Parks and her husband having a dog. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he thought about that. He felt strongly that if the couple owned a dog it would have been noted up front in the reports. House pets always leave trace evidence in a home. It was something that had to be accounted for in an investigation.

Bosch’s conclusion was that there was no dog and that the sign was posted as a deterrent. The next best thing to having a dog was pretending you had a dog. The question was did the killer know there was no dog? And if so, how?

Finally, he drove away and went up Orlando to Santa Monica Boulevard. He turned east toward home but pulled over again when he spotted a Starbucks at Fairfax. This time he bought four hours of time on the meter and went in with the discovery file.

With a cup of steaming black coffee in hand, he settled into a chair in the corner with a small round table next to it. There was no room to open the file and spread the stack, so he just pulled out the chrono to continue reading where he had left off. Before doing so he took a pen out of his shirt pocket and wrote a quick note on the outside of the file folder.

He needed to confirm his conclusion about the dog. Jotting the one-word question down was an almost involuntary response to what he had seen while sitting outside the murder house. But as soon as he wrote it, he realized that something as small as writing a single word on the file was a big step toward buying into the case. He had to ask himself the question. Did he miss the work so much that he could actually cross the aisle and work for an accused murderer? Because that was what it would be. Haller was the attorney of record but the client was sitting in a cell accused of raping a woman and beating her to death. If he accepted the job offer, Bosch would be working for him.

He felt the burn of humiliation on the back of his neck. He thought of all the guys before him who retired and the next thing you know they were working for defense lawyers or even the Public Defender’s Office. He had dropped relationships with those guys as though they were criminals themselves. The moment he heard someone had crossed, Bosch considered him persona non grata.

And now …

He took a sip of scalding coffee and tried to put the discomfort aside. He then took up the investigation where he had left off.

After picking up Foster at his studio, the Sheriff’s investigators drove him to the Lynwood station, where they borrowed a room in the detective bureau. The interview was short and its entire transcript was placed into the chronological record. Foster was asked only a few questions before realizing the depth of the trouble he was in and asking for Mickey Haller by name.

Cornell and Schmidt never told him that they had connected his DNA to a murder scene. They attempted to pad their case by flushing out an admission from Foster. But the effort failed. Cornell began the session by reading Foster his constitutional rights—always a quick way to put a willing interview subject on high alert.

Cornell: Okay, Mr. Foster, are you willing to talk to us a little bit, maybe answer some questions and clear up some details?

Foster: I guess so, but what’s it about? What do you people think I did?

Cornell: Well, it’s about Lexi Parks. You know her, right?

Foster: That name, it rings a bell for some reason but I don’t know. Maybe I sold her a painting or she’s one of the mothers of the kids I got come in the studio.

Cornell: No, sir, Lexi Parks didn’t buy a painting. She is the woman up in West Hollywood. You remember you visited her at her house?

Foster: West Hollywood? No, I ain’t been to West Hollywood.

Cornell: What about Vince Harrick, do you know him?

Foster: No, I don’t know no Vince Harrick. Who’s he?

Cornell: That’s Lexi’s husband. Deputy Harrick. Did you know him when he worked in this station?

Foster: What? I don’t know him. I’ve never been here before you took me.

Schmidt: Can you tell us where you were the night of February eighth going into the morning of February ninth of this year? That was a Sunday night. Where were you that night, Mr. Foster?

Foster: How the fuck would I know? That’s like two months ago. Tell you what, every night I’m either at home with my family, puttin’ my boys to sleep, or at the studio, doin’ my work. I stay over a lot at night to get things done. I’m not teachin’ anybody anything and I get to work on my own stuff, you understand? I mean, like I got people who want my pictures and they’ll pay. So I do the work. So you can take your pick between me bein’ at home or me bein’ at the studio because that’s it. There’s no other place. And I know my rights here and you people are up to no good on me. I think I want my lawyer now. I’m thinking I want Mickey Haller to represent me in this matter—whatever the fuck it is.

Cornell: Then let’s get it on the record right here, Mr. Foster. Tell us why you chose Lexi Parks.

Foster: Chose her for what? I don’t know her and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Cornell: You killed her, didn’t you? You beat her and you killed her and then you raped her.

Foster: You people are crazy. You’re really fucking crazy. Get me my goddamned lawyer. Now.

Cornell: Yeah, you bet, asshole. One lawyer coming right up.

Schmidt: You sure you don’t want to clear this up right here? Now’s the time. You bring a lawyer into this and it goes out of our hands.

Foster: I want my motherfucking lawyer.

Schmidt: You got it. But he’s not going to be able to explain how we found your DNA in Lexi Parks. Only you can—

Foster: DNA? What DNA? Lord, what is happening here? What is—I can’t believe you motherfuckers. I ain’t killed nobody. I want my lawyer and I’m not saying another word to you people.

Cornell: In that case, stand up, sir. You are under arrest for the murder of Lexi Parks.

End of Interview

Bosch read the entry twice and then made a note to remind Haller to get a video version of the interview. The interview room was most likely outfitted with a camera. If he stayed with the case, he would want to see Foster’s body language and hear the tone of each voice. It would tell him more than the words on the printout. Still, knowing that, his take on the transcript of the brief interview was that Foster had not seen the questions about Lexi Parks coming. There appeared to be real surprise and then panic in his words. He knew that didn’t really mean anything. Sex murders were usually the work of psychopaths and with that psychology was an innate ability to lie, to act, to feign surprise and horror when it was needed. Psychopaths were great liars.

Bosch noted one of the lines in the transcript. Cornell had accused Foster of beating and killing Lexi Parks and then raping her. Harry had not reviewed the autopsy yet but the question from Cornell was the first hint that the rape had occurred post-mortem. If that was what the evidence revealed, then it rolled a whole new set of psychological factors into the case.

Bosch continued to read. The rest of the chrono outlined the efforts of Cornell and Schmidt to find a connection between Da’Quan Foster and Lexi Parks, either through her husband and his work, which would put the motivation in the arena of revenge, or through a random intersection of predator and prey, which would better fit the profile and type of assault. But neither effort was fruitful. As Foster said during his brief interview, he had never been to the Sheriff’s Lynwood station, where Vincent Harrick had last worked five years ago. The investigators could find no evidence to the contrary and the reality was that there would be no logical reason for a Rollin’ 40s Crip out of Leimert Park to be conducting gang business all the way east in Lynwood. That was Bloods territory and it didn’t add up.