A Darkness More Than Night

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.”
    Langwiser introduced two large blowup photographs on hard backing as her next exhibits. After they were approved over unsustained objection she put them on easels set in front of the jury. One showed the bookcase in full while the other was a blowup of one shelf. The image was grainy but the titles on the spines of the books could be read.
    “Detective, did you compare these photos with those taken during the search of the defendant’s house?”
    “Yes, we did.”
    Langwiser asked permission to set up a third and fourth easel and to put blowup photos taken during the search of the full bookcase and the shelf with the space for a missing book. The judge approved. She then asked Bosch to step down from the witness stand and use a pointer to explain what he found during his comparison study. It was obvious to anyone looking at the photos what he found but Langwiser was painstakingly going through the motions so that no juror could be confused.
    Bosch put the pointer on the photo showing the open space in the shelved books. He then brought it over and put the tip on a book that was in the same spot.
    “When we searched the house on October seventeenth there was no book here between The Fifth Horizon and Print the Legend. Here in this photo, taken ten months before, there is a book between The Fifth Horizon and Print the Legend.”
    “And what is the title of that book?”
    “Victims of the Night.”
    “Okay, and did you look at photos you had from the search of the full bookcase in order to see if this book, Victims of the Night, had been shelved elsewhere?”
    Bosch pointed to the October 17 blowup of the entire bookcase.
    “We did. It’s not there.”
    “Did you find this book anywhere in the house?”
    “No, we did not.”
    “Thank you, Detective. You can return to the witness stand now.”
    Langwiser introduced a copy of Victims of the Night as an exhibit and handed it to Bosch.
    “Can you tell the jury what that is, Detective?”
    “It is a copy of Victims of the Night.”
    “Is that the book that was on the defendant’s shelf when his photograph was taken for Architectural Digest in January of last year?”
    “No, it’s not. It’s a copy of the same book. I bought it.”
    “Where?”
    “A place called Mystery Bookstore in Westwood.”
    “Why did you buy it there?”
    “I called around. It was the only place I could find that had it in stock.”
    “Why was it so hard to find?”
    “The man at Mystery Bookstore told me it was a small printing by a small publisher.”
    “Did you read this book?”
    “Parts of it. It is mostly photographs of unusual crime scenes and accident scenes, that sort of thing.”
    “Is there anything in there that struck you as unusual or perhaps relating to the killing of Jody Krementz?”
    “Yes, there is a photograph of a death scene on