Before the trial Langwiser had predicted that they would draw Storey into an outburst. Bosch had thought she was wrong. He thought Storey was too cool and calculating. Unless, of course, the outburst was a calculated move. Storey was a man who directed dramatic scenes and characters for a living. Bosch knew he should have seen that a time might come when he would be unwittingly used as a supporting actor in one of those scenes.
Chapter 25
The judge returned to the bench two minutes after leaving and Bosch wondered if he had retreated to his chambers to put a holster on under the robes. As soon as he sat down Houghton looked at the defense table. Storey was sitting with his face somberly pointed down at the sketch pad in front of him.
“Are we ready?” the judge asked.
All parties murmured they were ready. The judge called for the jury and they were brought in, most of them looking directly at Storey as they entered.
“Okay, folks, we’re going to try this again,” Judge Houghton said. “The exclamations you heard a few minutes ago from the defendant are to be ignored. They are not evidence, they are not anything. If Mr. Storey wants to personally deny the charges or anything else said about him in testimony, he’ll get that chance.”
Bosch watched Langwiser’s eyes dance. The judge’s comments were his way of slapping back at the defense. He was setting up the expectation that Storey would testify during the defense phase. If he didn’t, then it could be a letdown for the jurors.
The judge turned it back over to Langwiser, who continued her questioning of Bosch.
“Before we were interrupted, you were testifying about your conversation with the defendant at the door to his house.”
“Yes.”
“You quoted the defendant as saying, ‘And I’ll get away with it,’ is that correct?”
“Correct.”
“And you took this comment to be referring to the death of Jody Krementz, correct?”
“That’s what we were talking about, yes.”
“Did he say anything else after that?”
“Yes.”
Bosch paused, wondering if Storey would make another outburst. He didn’t.
“He said, ‘I am a god in this town, Detective Bosch. You don’t fuck with the gods.’”
Nearly ten seconds of silence went by before Langwiser was prompted by the judge to move on.
“What did you do after the defendant made this statement to you?”
“Well, I was kind of taken aback. I was surprised that he would say this to me.”
“You were not recording the conversation, is that correct?”
“That is correct. It was just a conversation at the door after I knocked.”
“So what happened next?”
“I went to the car and immediately wrote out these notes of the conversation so I would have it verbatim from when it was freshest in my mind. I told my partners what had just transpired and we decided to call the district attorney’s office for advice as to whether this admission to me would give us probable cause to arrest Mr. Storey. Um, what happened was that none of us could get a signal on our cell phones because we were up there in the hills. We left the house and drove to the fire station on Mulholland just east of Laurel Canyon Boulevard. We asked to use a phone there and I made the call to the DA.”
“And who did you speak with?”
“You. I recounted the case, what had transpired during the search and what Mr. Storey said at the door. It was decided to continue the investigation at that point and not make the arrest.”
“Did you agree with that decision?”
“Not at the time. I wanted to arrest him.”
“Did Mr. Storey’s admission change the investigation?”
“It pretty much closed the focus. The man had admitted the crime to me. We began looking only at him.”
“Did you ever consider that perhaps the admission was an empty boast, that at the same time you were in essence baiting the defendant, he was baiting you?”
“Yes, I considered it. But ultimately I believed he made the statements because they were true and because he believed he was in an invincible position at that point.”
There was a sharp ripping sound as Storey tore the top page off his sketch pad. He crumpled the paper and bounced it across the table. It hit a computer screen and bounced off the table to the floor.
“Thank you, Detective,” Langwiser said. “Now, you said the decision was to continue the investigation. Can you tell the jury what that entailed?”
Bosch described how he and his partners had interviewed dozens of witnesses who had seen the defendant and the victim at the film premiere or at the reception that followed in a circus tent erected in a nearby parking lot. They also interviewed dozens more people who knew Storey or had worked with him. Bosch acknowledged that none of these interviews had produced information important to the investigation.
“You mentioned earlier that during the search of the defendant’s home you became curious about a missing book, correct?”
“Yes.”
Fowkkes objected.
“There has been no evidence whatsoever about a missing book. There was a space on the shelf. It does not mean there was ever a book in that place.”
Langwiser promised she would tie it all up promptly and the judge overruled.
“Did there come a time when you determined what book had been in that space on the shelf in the defendant’s home?”
“Yes, in the course of our gathering of background information on Mr. Storey, my partner, Kizmin Rider, who was aware of his work and professional reputation, remembered that she had read a story about him in a magazine called Architectural Digest. She was able to do an Internet search and determine that the issue she remembered was from February of last year. She then ordered a copy of the magazine from the publisher. What she had remembered was that there were photos in the article of Mr. Storey in his house. She remembered his bookshelves because she is an avid reader and was curious about what books this movie director would have on his shelves.”
Langwiser made a motion to introduce the magazine as her next exhibit. It was received by the judge and Langwiser gave it to Bosch on the witness stand.
“Is that the magazine your partner received?”
“Yes.”
“Could you turn to the story on the defendant and describe the photograph on the opening page of the story?”
Bosch flipped to a marker in the magazine.
“It is a photograph of David Storey sitting on the couch in the living room of his house. To his left are the bookshelves.”
“Can you read the titles of the books on the spines ofthe books?”
“Some of them. They are not all clear.”
“When you received this magazine from the publisher, what did you do with it?”
“We saw that not all of the books were clear. We contacted the publisher again and attempted to borrow the negative of this photo. We dealt with the editor in chief, who would not allow the negatives out of the office. He cited media law and free-press restraints.”
“So what happened next?”
“The editor said he would even fight a court order. An attorney from the city attorney’s office was called in and began negotiating with the magazine’s lawyer. The result was that I flew to New York City and was allowed access to the negative in the photo lab in the Architectural Digest offices.”
“For the record, what date were you there?”
“I took a redeye on October twenty-ninth. I was at the magazine’s office the following morning. It was a Monday, October thirtieth.”
“And what did you do there?”
“I had the magazine’s photo lab manager make blowups of the shot containing the bookshelves.”