“This is the first time I’ve been here,” McPherson said. “It’s as quiet as an insurance office.”
“Yeah, I guess we lost a lot of the charm when we moved,” Bosch replied.
The PAB had been in operation for only six months. It had a quiet and sterile quality about it. Most of the building’s denizens, including Bosch, missed the old headquarters, Parker Center, even though it was beyond decrepit.
“I’ve got a private room over here,” he said, pointing to a door on the far side of the squad room.
He used a key to unlock the door and they walked into a large space with a boardroom-style table at center. One wall was glass that looked out on the squad room but Bosch had lowered and closed the blinds for privacy. On the opposite wall was a large whiteboard with a row of photos across the top margin and numerous notes written beneath each shot. The photos were of young girls.
“I’ve been working on this nonstop for a week,” Bosch said. “You probably have been wondering where I disappeared to so I figured it was time to show you what I’ve got.”
McPherson stopped just a few steps inside the door and stared, squinting her eyes and revealing to Bosch her vanity. She needed glasses but he’d never seen her wearing them.
Haller stepped over to the table, where there were several archival case boxes gathered. He slowly pulled out a chair to sit down.
“Maggie,” Bosch prompted. “Why don’t you sit down?”
McPherson finally broke from her stare and took the chair at the end of the table.
“Is this what I think it is?” she asked. “They all look like Melissa Landy.”
“Well,” Bosch said. “Let me just go over it and you’ll draw your own conclusions.”
Bosch stayed on his feet. He moved around the table to the whiteboard. With his back to the board he started to tell the story.
“Okay, I have a friend. She’s a former profiler. I’ve never-”
“For whom?” Haller asked.
“The FBI, but does it matter? What I’m saying is that I’ve never known anybody who was better at it. So, shortly after I came into this I asked her informally to take a look at the case files and she did. Her conclusions were that back in ’eighty-six this case was read all wrong. And where the original investigators saw a crime of impulse and opportunity, she saw something different. To keep it short, she saw indications that the person who killed Melissa Landy may have killed before.”
“Here we go,” Haller said.
“Look, man, I don’t know why you’re giving me the attitude,” Bosch said. “You pulled me in as investigator on this thing and I’m investigating. Why don’t you just let me tell you what I know? Then you can do with it whatever you want. You think it’s legit, then run with it. You don’t, then shitcan it. I will have done my job by bringing it to you.”
“I’m not giving you any attitude, Harry. I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking about all the things that can complicate a trial. Complicate discovery. You realize that everything you are telling us has to be turned over to Royce now?”
“Only if you intend to use it.”
“What?”
“I thought you’d know the rules of discovery better than me.”
“I know the rules. Why did you bring us here for this dog and pony show if you don’t think we should use it?”
“Why don’t you just let him tell the story,” McPherson said. “And then maybe we’ll understand.”
“Then, go ahead,” Haller said. “Anyway, all I said was ‘Here we go,’ which I think is a pretty common phrase indicating surprise and change of direction. That’s all. Continue, Harry. Please.”
Bosch glanced back at the board for a moment and then turned back to his audience of two and continued.
“So my friend the profiler thinks Jason Jessup killed before he killed Melissa Landy, and most likely was successful in hiding his involvement in these previous crimes.”
“So you went looking,” McPherson said.
“I did. Now, remember our original investigator, Kloster, was no slouch. He went looking, too. Only problem was he was using the wrong profile. They had semen on the dress, strangulation and a body dump in an accessible location. That was the profile, so that is what he went looking for and he found no similars, or at least no cases that connected. End of story, end of search. They believed Jessup acted out this one time, was exceedingly disorganized and sloppy, and got caught.”
Harry turned and gestured to the row of photographs on the whiteboard behind him.
“So I went a different way. I went looking for girls who were reported missing and never showed up again. Girls reported as runaways as well as possible abductions. Jessup is from Riverside County so I expanded the search to include Riverside and L.A. counties. Since Jessup was twenty-four when he was arrested I went back to when he was eighteen, putting the search limits from nineteen eighty to ’eighty-six. As far as victim profile, I went Caucasian aged twelve to eighteen.”
“Why did you go as old as eighteen?” McPherson asked. “Our victim was twelve.”
“Rachel said-I mean, the profiler said that sometimes starting out, these people pick from their own peer group. They learn how to kill and then they start to define their targets according to their paraphilias. A paraphilia is-”
“I know what it is,” McPherson said. “You did all of this work yourself? Or did this Rachel help you?”
“No, she just worked up the profile. I had some help from my partner pulling all of this together. But it was tough because not all the records are complete, especially on cases that never got above runaway status, and a lot was cleared out. Most of the runaway files from back then are gone.”
“They didn’t digitize?” McPherson asked.
Bosch shook his head.
“Not in L.A. County. They prioritized when they switched over to computerized records and went back and captured records for major crimes. No runaway cases unless there was the possibility of abduction involved. Riverside County was different. Fewer cases out there so they archived everything digitally. Anyway, for that time period in these two counties, we came up with twenty-nine cases over the six-year period we’re looking at. Again, these were unresolved cases. In each the girl disappeared and never came home. We pulled what records we could find and most didn’t fit because of witness statements or other issues. But I couldn’t rule out these eight.”
Bosch turned to the board and looked at the photos of eight smiling girls. All of them long gone over time.
“I’m not saying that Jessup had anything to do with any of these girls dropping off the face of the earth, but he could have. As Maggie already noticed, they all have a resemblance to one another and to Melissa Landy. And by the way, the resemblance extends to body type as well. They’re all within ten pounds and two inches of one another and our victim.”
Bosch turned back to his audience and saw McPherson and Haller transfixed by the photographs.
“Beneath each photo I’ve put the particulars,” he said. “Physical descriptors, date and location of disappearance, the basic stuff.”
“Did Jessup know any of them?” Haller asked. “Is he connected in any way to any of them?”
That was the bottom line, Bosch knew.
“Nothing really solid-I mean, not that I’ve found so far,” he said. “The best connection that we have is this girl.”
He turned and pointed to the first photo on the left.
“The first girl. Valerie Schlicter. She disappeared in nineteen eighty-one from the same neighborhood in Riverside that Jessup grew up in. He would’ve been nineteen and she was seventeen. They both went to Riverside High but because he dropped out early, it doesn’t look like they were there at the same time. Anyway, she was counted as a runaway because there were problems in her home. It was a single-parent home. She lived with her mother and a brother and then one day about a month after graduating from high school, she split. The investigation never rose above a missing persons case, largely because of her age. She turned eighteen a month after she disappeared. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it an investigation. They more or less waited to see if she’d come home. She didn’t.”