The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

the witness and Church were on the night the eleventh victim was murdered and Wieczorek answered that they were at his own apartment with seven other men holding a bachelor party for a fellow employee from the lab.
    “How long was Norman Church at your apartment?”
    “The whole time of the party. I’d say from nine o’clock on. We finished up after two in the morning. The police said that girl, the eleventh one, went to some hotel at one and got herself killed. Norman was with me at one o’clock in the morning.”
    “Could he have slipped away for an hour or so without you realizing it?”
    “No way. You’re in a room with eight guys and you know if one mysteriously disappears for a half hour.”
    Chandler thanked him and sat down. Belk leaned to Bosch and whispered, “I wonder what he’s going to do with the new asshole I’m going to tear him.”
    He got up armed with the deposition transcript and lumbered to the lectern as if he were lugging an elephant rifle. Wieczorek, who wore thick glasses that magnified his eyes, watched him suspiciously.
    “Mr. Wieczorek, do you remember me? Remember the deposition I took of you a few months back?”
    Belk held the transcript up, as a reminder.
    “I remember you,” Wieczorek said.
    “Ninety—five pages, Mr. Wieczorek. Nowhere in this transcript is there any mention of any bachelor party. Why is that?”
    “I guess because you didn’t ask.”
    “But you didn’t bring it up, did you? The police are saying your best buddy murdered eleven women, you supposedly know that’s a lie, but you don’t say a thing, is that right?”
    “Yeah, that’s right.”
    “Care to tell us why?”
    “Far as I was concerned, you were part of it. I only answered what I was asked. I wasn’t volunteering shi-uh, nothing.”
    “Let me ask you, did you ever tell the police this? Back then, back when Church was killed and all the headlines said he killed eleven women? Ever pick up the phone one time and tell them they got the wrong guy?”
    “No. At the time I didn’t know. It was only when I read a book that came out on the case a couple years ago and there were details in there about when that last girl got killed. Then I knew he was with me during that whole time. I called the police and asked for the task force and they said it was disbanded long ago. I left a message for that fellow the book said was in charge, Lloyd, I think it was, and he never called me.”
    Belk exhaled into the lectern’s microphone, creating a loud sigh that indicated his weariness in dealing with this moron.
    “So, if I can recap, you are telling this jury that two years after the murders, when this book came out, you read it and immediately realized you had an ironclad alibi for your dead friend. Am I missing anything, Mr. Wieczorek?”
    “Uh, just the part about suddenly realizing. It wasn’t sudden.”
    “Then what was it?”
    “Well, when I read the date-September 28-it set me to thinking and I just remembered that the bachelor party was on September 28 that year and Norman was there at my house all that time. So then I verified it and called Norman’s wife to tell her he wasn’t what they said he was.”
    “You verified it? With the others at the party?”
    “No, didn’t have to.”
    “Then how, Mr. Wieczorek?” Belk asked in an exasperated tone.
    “I looked at the video I had of that night. It had the date and time down in the corner of the frame.”
    Bosch saw Belk’s face turn a lighter shade of pale. The lawyer looked at the judge, then down at his pad, then back up at the judge. Bosch felt his heart sink. Belk had broken the same cardinal rule Chandler had broken the day before. He had asked a question for which he didn’t already know the answer.
    It didn’t take a lawyer to know that since it was Belk who had drawn out mention of the videotape, Chandler was now free to explore it, to move to introduce the videotape as evidence. It had been a clever trap. Because it was new evidence from Wieczorek, not contained in his deposition, Chandler would have had to inform Belk earlier if she planned to draw it out on direct examination. Instead, she had skillfully allowed Belk to blunder in and draw it out. He now stood there defenseless, hearing it for the first time along with the jurors.
    “Nothing further,” Belk said and returned to his seat with his head down. He immediately pulled one of the law books on the table onto his lap and began paging through it.
    Chandler