A Darkness More Than Night - Michael Connelly [61]
He looked back out the door and saw Winston putting the evidence box into the trunk of her car. Behind him somebody cleared his throat. McCaleb abruptly turned and there was Buddy Lockridge in the stairwell looking up at him from the lower deck. He had a pile of clothes clasped in his arms.
“Buddy, what the hell are you doing?”
“Man, that’s one weird case you’re working on.”
“I said what the hell are you doing?”
“I was going to do laundry and I came over here ’cause half my stuff was down in the cabin. Then you two showed up and when you started talking I knew I couldn’t come up.”
He held the pile of clothes in his arms up as proof of his story.
“So I just sat down there on the bed and waited.”
“And listened to everything we said.”
“It’s a crazy case, man. What are you going to do? I’ve seen that Bosch guy on Court TV. He kind of looks like he’s wound a little too tight.”
“I know what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
He pointed to the glass door.
“Leave, Buddy, and don’t tell a word of this to anybody. You understand me?”
“Sure, I understand. I was just —”
“Leaving.”
“Sorry, man.”
“So am I.”
McCaleb opened the slider and Lockridge walked out like a dog with his tail between his legs. McCaleb had to hold himself back from kicking him in the rear. Instead he angrily slid the door closed and it banged loudly in its frame. He stood there looking out through the glass until he saw Lockridge make it all the way up the ramp and over to the facilities building where there was a coin laundry.
His eavesdropping had compromised the investigation. McCaleb knew he should page Winston immediately and tell her, see how she wanted to handle it. But he let it go. The truth was, he didn’t want to make any move that might take him out of the investigation.
19
After putting his hand on the Bible and promising the whole truth, Harry Bosch took a seat in the witness chair and glanced up at the camera mounted on the wall above the jury box. The eye of the world was upon him, he knew. The trial was being broadcast live on Court TV and locally on Channel 9 . He tried to give no appearance of nervousness. But the fact was that more than the jurors would be studying him and judging his performance and personality. It was the first time in many years of testifying in criminal trials that he did not feel totally at ease. Being on the side of the truth was not a comfort when he knew the truth had to run a treacherous obstacle course set before it by a wealthy, connected defendant and his wealthy, connected attorney.
He put the blue binder — the murder book — down on the front ledge of the witness box and pulled the microphone toward him, creating a high-pitched squeal that hurt every set of ears in the courtroom.
“Detective Bosch, please don’t touch the microphone,” Judge Houghton intoned.
“Sorry, Your Honor.”
A deputy sheriff who acted as the judge’s bailiff came over to the witness box, turned the microphone off and adjusted its location. When Bosch nodded at its new position, the bailiff turned it back on. The judge’s clerk then asked Bosch to state his full, formal name and spell it for the record.
“Very well,” the judge said after Bosch finished. “Ms. Langwiser?”
Deputy District Attorney Janis Langwiser got up from the prosecution table and went to the attorney’s lectern. She carried a yellow legal tablet with her questions on it. She was second seat at the prosecution table but had worked with the investigators since the start of the case. It had been decided that she would handle Bosch’s testimony.
Langwiser was a young up-and-coming lawyer in the DA’s office. In the span of a few short years she had risen from a position of filing cases for more experienced lawyers in the office to handle to taking them all the way to court herself. Bosch had worked with her before on a politically sensitive and treacherous case known as the Angels Flight murders. The experience resulted in his recommendation of her as second chair to Kretzler. Since working with her