Michael Connelly: The Crossing

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.

Cornell’s focus was on the Lynwood/Harrick angle and backgrounding Foster, while Schmidt worked the sexual predator angle. Schmidt’s task was the more difficult to investigate and prove because it relied upon the happenstance of Lexi Parks somehow, somewhere crossing the radar of a sexual sadist on the hunt. Bosch, like Cornell and Schmidt, had already read and seen enough to know the murder was not a crime of opportunity. There was more than enough evidence that the victim was stalked and the crime planned. The BEWARE OF DOG sign was the starting point of this supposition. According to the discovery, there was no dog in the house, and the killer seemed to know it. That suggested that the house on Orlando had been cased. Other factors such as the alarm system not being engaged and the husband working a midnight shift also added to the theory.

Schmidt carefully documented the victim’s activities in the six weeks prior to her death, trying to find the place where Foster and Parks crossed paths. She looked at hundreds of hours of video taken from cameras along Lexi’s path but she never found Foster in one digital frame. Bosch knew that this was the juncture where cases could go wrong. They had a suspect in custody and a DNA match. Some would already call that a slam-dunk case. But the investigators were being thorough. They were looking for more and in doing so they were sliding into the tunnel. The tunnel was the place where vision narrows and the investigator sees only the bird in hand. Bosch had to wonder if Schmidt had been looking for any other faces on those videos besides Foster’s.

Bosch made another note on the outside of the file, a reminder to tell Haller he should make a discovery request to be allowed access to all of the videos Schmidt had studied.

The chrono had an oblique reference to a witness interviewed by Cornell and identified only as AW — which Bosch recognized as shorthand for alibi witness . It was not uncommon to use coded abbreviations in reports to safeguard witnesses who were not officially given confidential informant status. Bosch also knew that AW could be a witness fortifying or knocking down a suspect’s alibi. In this case the chrono said that Cornell met with the AW seven days after Foster’s arrest and that the meeting lasted an hour.

Bosch skimmed through the remaining pages of the chrono and nothing else caught his eye. There were routine entries on preparations for the case to move toward trial. Cornell and Schmidt found nothing that directly tied Foster to the victim but they had his DNA, and apart from the O. J. Simpson case twenty years before, DNA was as good as it got when it came to closing out a case. Cornell, Schmidt, and the prosecutor assigned to the case were locked and loaded. They sailed through a four-hour preliminary hearing in April and were now ready for trial.

The prosecutor was a woman — always a good edge to have when it was a sex crime. Her name was Ellen Tasker and Bosch had worked with her on some big cases early in her career. She was good and lived up to her name when it came to making sure cases were ready for trial. She was a lifer in the D.A.’s Office, a prosecutor who kept her head below the level of office politics and just did her job. And she did it well. Bosch could not recall Tasker ever losing a case.

Before moving on, he called Haller.

“You said that your client had an alibi but you just couldn’t prove it.”

“That’s right. He was in the studio painting. He did that a lot — worked all night. But he worked alone. How am I going to prove that?”

“Did he have a cell phone?”

“No, no cell so no pinging record. Just the landline in the studio. Why?”

“There is a reference in the Chronological Log to one of the detectives meeting with an alibi witness. You know anything about that?”

“No, and if they found somebody who supports DQ’s alibi, they have to bring them forward.”

“DQ?”

“Da’Quan. He signs his paintings DQ. By the way, you know that’s how I’m getting paid, right? In paintings. I figure we get an acquittal and the value will go way up.”

Bosch didn’t care how Haller was getting paid.

“Listen to me. I’m not saying this witness supports his alibi. It’s probably the opposite. It was referenced in the chrono and I just wanted to know if you were aware.”

“No, I didn’t see that.”

“It was coded and brief — which makes me think it might be significant. I’ll look through the witness reports and see if I can find anything.”

“If you don’t find it, then that’s trouble for them. Violation of discovery.”

“Whatever. I’ll call you later.”

Clicking off, Bosch realized he needed to be more guarded with Haller and not just throw things out to him that he might tee up and take into court, dragging Bosch along with him.