The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

writing out questions for him. Deborah Church sat next to her with her hands folded on the table, her eyes averted from Bosch. A minute later the door to the jury room opened and the jurors filed into the box. Then the judge came out. Bosch took a deep breath and got ready as Chandler walked to the lectern with her yellow pad.
    “Mr. Bosch,” she began, “how many people have you killed?”
    Belk immediately objected and asked for a sidebar. The attorneys and the court reporter moved to the side of the bench and whispered for five minutes. Bosch only heard bits and pieces, most of it from Belk, who was loudest. At one point he argued that one shooting only was in dispute-the Church slaying-and all others were irrelevant. He heard Chandler say that the information was relevant because it illustrated the mind-set of the defendant. Bosch couldn’t hear the judge’s response but after the attorneys and reporter were back in place, the judge said, “The defendant will answer the question.”
    “I can’t,” Bosch replied.
    “Detective Bosch, the court is ordering you to answer.”
    “I can’t answer it, Judge. I don’t know how many people I’ve killed.”
    “You served in combat in Vietnam?” Chandler asked.
    “Yes.”
    “What were your duties?”
    “Tunnel rat. I went into the enemy’s tunnels. Sometimes this resulted in direct confrontation. Sometimes I used explosives to destroy tunnel complexes. It’s impossible for me to know how many people were in them.”
    “Okay, Detective, since you finished your duties with the armed services and became a police officer, how many people have you killed?”
    “Three, including Norman Church.”
    “Can you tell us about the two incidents not involving Mr. Church? In general.”
    “Yes, one was before Church, the other after. The first time I killed someone it was during a murder investigation. I went to question a man I thought was a witness. Turned out he was the killer. When I knocked on the door, he fired a shot through it. Missed me. I kicked the door open and went in. I heard him running toward the rear of the house. I followed him to the yard, where he was climbing over a fence. As he was about to go over, he twisted around to take another shot at me. I fired first and he went down.
    “The second time, this was after Church, I was involved in a murder and robbery investigation with the FBI. There was a shoot-out between two suspects and myself and my partner at the time, an FBI agent. I killed one of the suspects.”
    “So in those two cases, the men you killed were armed?”
    “That is correct.”
    “Three shootings involving deaths, that is quite a lot, even for a twenty-year veteran, isn’t it?”
    Bosch waited a beat for Belk to make an objection but the fat man was too busy writing on his tablet. He had missed it.
    “Um, I know twenty-year cops who have never even had to draw their guns, and I know some that have been involved in as many as seven deaths. It’s a matter of what kind of cases you draw, it’s a matter of luck.”
    “Good luck or bad luck?”
    This time Belk objected and the judge sustained it. Chandler quickly went on.
    “After you killed Mr. Church while he was unarmed, did you feel badly about it?”
    “Not really. Not until I got sued and heard you were the lawyer.”
    There was laughter in the courtroom and even Honey Chandler smiled. After he had quieted the room with a sharp rebuke from his gavel, the judge instructed Bosch to keep his answers on point and to refrain from personal asides.
    “No bad feelings,” Bosch said. “Like I said before, I would rather have taken Church alive than dead. But I wanted to take him off the street, either way.”
    “But you set the whole thing up, tactically, so that it had to end in his permanent removal, didn’t you?”
    “No, I didn’t. Nothing was set up. Things just happened.”
    Bosch knew better than to show any anger toward her. Rather than make angry denouncements, the rule of thumb was to answer each question as if he was dealing with a person who was simply mistaken.
    “You were, however, satisfied that Mr. Church had been killed while unarmed, nude, totally defenseless?”
    “Satisfaction doesn’t enter into it.”
    “Your Honor,” Chandler said. “May I approach the witness with an exhibit? It’s marked plaintiff’s 3A.”
    She handed copies of a piece of paper to Belk and the judge’s clerk, who handed it over the bench to the judge. While the judge