The Reversal

reached across the table and slid all of the photos together in one stack and then put them to the side. She then spread out photos taken of the inside of the tow truck Jessup was driving on the day of the murder. The truck actually had a name, which was stenciled on the dashboard.
    “Okay, so on the day in question, Jessup was driving Matilda,” Walling said.
    Bosch studied the three photos she had spread out. The cab of the tow truck was in neat order. Thomas Brothers maps—no GPS back then—were neatly stacked on top of the dashboard and a small stuffed animal that Bosch presumed was an aardvark hung from the rearview mirror. A cup holder on the center console held a Big Gulp from 7-Eleven and a sticker on the glove compartment door read Grass or Ass—Nobody Rides for Free .
    With her trusty pen, Walling circled a spot on one of the photos. It was a police scanner mounted under the dashboard.
    “Did anybody consider what this means?”
    Bosch shrugged.
    “Back then, I don’t know. What’s it mean now?”
    “Okay, Jessup worked for Aardvark, which was a towing company licensed by the city. However, it wasn’t the only one. There was competition among tow companies. The drivers listened to scanners, picking up police calls about accidents and parking infractions. It gave them the jump on the competition, right? Except that every tow truck had a scanner and everybody was listening and trying to get the jump on everyone else.”
    “Right. So what’s it mean?”
    “Well, let’s look at the abduction first. It is pretty clear from the witness testimony and everything else that this was not a crime of great planning and patience. This was an impulse crime. That much they’ve had right from the beginning. We can talk about the motivating factors at length in a little while, but suffice it to say, something caused Jessup to act out in an almost uncontrollable way.”
    “I think I might have motivating factors covered,” Bosch said.
    “Good, I’m eager to hear about it. But for now, we will assume that some sort of internal pressure led Jessup to act on an undeniable impulse and he grabbed the girl. He took her back to the truck and took off. He obviously didn’t know about the sister hiding in the bushes and that she would sound the alarm. So he completes the abduction and drives away, but within minutes he hears the report about the abduction on the police scanner he has in the truck. That brings home to him the reality of what he’s done and what his predicament is. He never imagined things would move so fast. He more or less comes to his senses. He realizes he must abandon his plan now and move into preservation mode. He needs to kill the girl to eliminate her as a witness and then hide her body in order to prevent his arrest.”
    Bosch nodded as he understood her theory.
    “So what you’re saying is, the crime that occurred was not the crime that he intended.”
    “Correct. He abandoned the true plan.”
    “So when Kloster went to the bureau looking for similars, he was looking for the wrong thing.”
    “Right again.”
    “But could there actually have been a plan? You just said yourself that it was a crime of compulsion. He saw an opportunity and within a few seconds acted on it. What plan could there have been?”
    “Actually, it is more than likely that he had a complex and complete plan. Killers like these have a paraphilia—a set construct of the perfect psychosexual experience. They fantasize about it in great detail. And as you can expect, it often involves torture and murder. The paraphilia is part of their daily fantasy life and it builds to the point where the desire becomes the urge which eventually becomes a compulsion to act out. When they do cross that line and act out, the abduction of the victim may be completely unplanned and improvisational, but the killing sequence is not. The victim is unfortunately dropped into a set construct that has played over and over in the killer’s mind.”
    Bosch looked at his notebook and realized he had stopped taking notes.
    “Okay, but you’re saying that didn’t happen here,” he said. “He abandoned the plan. He heard the abduction report on the scanner, and that took him from fantasy to reality. He realized that they could be closing in on him. He killed her and dumped her, hoping to avoid detection.”
    “Exactly. And therefore, as you just noted, when investigators attempted to compare elements of this murder to others’, they