The Reversal

won’t talk to me.”
    “Then find out everything you can about him. So when the time comes we can destroy him.”
    “Got it.”
    Bosch turned and headed down the hall toward the elevators. McPherson called after him. He stopped and looked back.
    “Did you mean it?” McPherson asked.
    “Mean what?”
    “What you said down in the lobby. What you asked. You think twenty-four years ago she made it all up?”
    Bosch looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, what about the hair in the truck? Doesn’t that tie her story in?”
    Bosch held a hand up empty.
    “It’s circumstantial. And I wasn’t there when they found it.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means sometimes things happen when the victim is a child. And that I wasn’t there when they found it.”
    “Boy, maybe you should be working for the defense.”
    Bosch dropped his hand to his side.
    “I’m sure they’ve thought of all of this already.”
    He turned back toward the elevators and headed down the hallway.

Twenty-nine
    Tuesday, April 6, 9:00 A.M .
    S ometimes the wheels of justice roll smoothly. The second day of trial started exactly as scheduled. The full jury was in the box, the judge was on the bench and Jason Jessup and his attorney were seated at the defense table. I stood and called my first witness of what I hoped would be a productive day for the prosecution. Harry Bosch even had Izzy Gordon in the courtroom ready to go. By five minutes after the hour, she was sworn in and seated. She was a small woman with black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes. My records said she was fifty years old but she looked older.
    “Ms. Gordon, can you tell the jury what you do for a living?”
    “Yes. I am a forensic technician and crime scene supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been so employed in the forensics unit since nineteen eighty-six.”
    “Were you so employed on February sixteenth of that year?”
    “Yes, I was. It was my first day of work.”
    “And what was your assignment on that day?”
    “My job was to learn. I was assigned to a crime scene supervisor and I was to get on-the-job training.”
    Izzy Gordon was a major find for the prosecution. Two technicians and a supervisor had worked the three separate crime scenes relating to the Melissa Landy case—the home on Windsor, the trash bin behind the El Rey and the tow truck driven by Jessup. Gordon had been assigned to be at the supervisor’s side and therefore had been in attendance at all three crime scenes. The supervisor was long since dead and the other techs were retired and unable to offer testimony about all three locations. Finding Gordon allowed me to streamline the introduction of crime scene evidence.
    “Who was that supervisor?”
    “That was Art Donovan.”
    “And you got a call out with him that day?”
    “Yes, we did. An abduction that turned into a homicide. We ended up going from scene to scene to scene that day. Three related locations.”
    “Okay, let’s take those scenes one at a time.”
    Over the next ninety minutes I walked Gordon through her Sunday tour of crime scenes on February 16, 1986. Using her as the conduit, I could deliver crime scene photographs, videos and evidence reports. Royce continued his tack of objecting at will in an effort to prevent the unimpeded flow of information to the jury. But he was scoreless and getting under the judge’s skin. I could tell, and so I did not complain. I wanted that annoyance to fester. It might come in handy later.
    Gordon’s testimony was fairly pedestrian as she first discussed the unsuccessful efforts to find shoe prints and other trace evidence on the front lawn of the Landy’s house. It turned more dramatic when she recalled being urgently called to a new crime scene—the trash bin behind the El Rey.
    “We were called when they found the body. It was handled in whispers because the family was there in the house and we did not want to upset them until it was confirmed that there was a body and that it was the little girl.”
    “You and Donovan went to the El Rey Theatre?”
    “Yes, along with Detective Kloster. We met the assistant medical examiner there. We now had a homicide, so more technicians were called in, too.”
    The El Rey portion of Gordon’s testimony was largely an opportunity for me to show more video footage and photographs of the victim on the overhead screens. If nothing else, I wanted every juror in