A Darkness More Than Night

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