The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

line on his pad, flipped the page and came up with a new question. He was doing well with Amado, Bosch thought. Better than Money had. It may have been a mistake for her to have called him as a witness.
    “How do you know that the killer used a condom?” Belk asked. “Couldn’t these women have been raped with an object and that account for the lack of semen?”
    “That could have happened and it could account for some of the damage. But there was clear evidence in five of the cases that they had had sex with a man wearing a condom.”
    “And what was that?”
    “We did rape kits. There was-”
    “Hold it a second, Mr. Amado. What is a rape kit?”
    “It’s a protocol for collecting evidence from bodies of people that may have been the victims of rape. In the case of a woman, we take vaginal and anal swabs, we comb the pubic area looking for foreign pubic hair, procedures such as that. We also take samples of blood and hair from the victim in case there is a call for comparison to evidence found on a suspect. It’s collected together in an evidence kit.”
    “Okay. Before I interrupted there, you were going to tell us about the evidence found in five of the victims that was indicative of sex with a man who wore a condom.”
    “Yes, we did the rape kits each time we got a Dollmaker victim. And there was a foreign substance found in vaginal samplings in five of the victims. It was the same material in each of the women.”
    “What was it, Mr. Amado?”
    “It was identified as a condom lubricant.”
    “Was this material something that could be identified to a specific brand and style of condom?”
    Looking at Belk, Bosch could see the heavy man was chomping at the bit. Amado was answering each question slowly and each time Bosch could see that Belk could barely wait for the answer before plowing ahead with a new question. Belk was on a roll.
    “Yes,” Amado said. “We identified the product. It was from a Trojan-Enz lubricated condom with special receptacle end.”
    Looking at the court reporter, Amado said, “That’s spelled E-N-Z.”
    “And that was the same for all five samples received from the five bodies?” Belk asked.
    “Yes it was.”
    “I am going to ask you a hypothetical question. Assuming that the attacker of eleven women used the same brand of lubricated condom, how could you account for lubrication being found in the vaginal sampling of only five victims?”
    “I believe that a number of factors could be involved. Such as the intensity of the victim’s struggle. But essentially it would be just a matter of how much of the lubricant came off the condom and stayed in the vagina.”
    “When police officers brought you the various containers of makeup from the Hyperion apartment rented by Norman Church for analysis, did they bring anything else?”
    “Yes they did.”
    “What was that?”
    “A box of Trojan-Enz lubricated condoms with special receptacle ends.”
    “How many condoms did the box hold?”
    “Twelve separately packaged condoms.”
    “How many were still in the box when the police delivered it to you?”
    “There were three left.”
    “Nothing further.”
    Belk returned to the defense table with a triumphant spring in his walk.
    “A moment, Your Honor,” Chandler said.
    Bosch watched her open a fat file full of police documents. She leafed through the pages and took out a short stack of documents held together with a paper clip. She read the top one quickly and then held it up to leaf through the rest. Bosch could see the top one was the protocol list from a rape kit. She was reading the protocols from all eleven victims.
    Belk leaned over to him and whispered, “She’s about to step into some deep shit. I was going to bring this up later, during your testimony.”
    “Ms. Chandler?” the judge intoned.
    She jumped up.
    “Yes, Your Honor, I’m ready. I have a quick redirect of Mr. Amado.”
    She brought the stack of protocols with her to the lectern, read the last two and then looked at the coroner’s analyst.
    “Mr. Amado, you mentioned that part of the rape kit consisted of combing for foreign pubic hairs, do I have that right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can you explain that procedure a little more?”
    “Well, basically, the comb is passed through the pubic hair of the victim and it collects unattached hairs. Oftentimes, this unattached hair is from the victim’s attacker, or possibly other sexual partners.”
    “How’s it get there?”
    Amado’s face