now. He looked up at the City Hall tower and watched the gulls circling above it. He always wondered what drew them there. It was miles from the ocean but there were always seabirds on top of City Hall. Chandler kept talking.
“Two things I’ve always been curious about,” she said. “One, why did Galton run? And, two, why did he hide the gun? And I think the answers are both the same. He had no faith in justice, in the system. No hope. He had done nothing wrong but he ran because he was a black man in a white neighborhood and he had heard the stories all his life about what white cops do to black men in that position. His lawyer told him he had a dead-bang case, but he brought a gun to the courthouse because he had heard all his life about what jurors decide when it’s a black man’s word against the cops.”
Bosch looked at his watch. It was time to go in but he did not want to walk away from her.
“So that’s why Tommy said justice happened,” she said. “That was justice for Andre Galton. Faraday referred all his cases to other lawyers after that. I took a few. And he never set foot in a courtroom again.”
She stubbed out what was left of her cigarette.
“End of story,” she said.
“I’m sure the civil rights lawyers tell that one a lot,” Bosch said. “And now you put me and Church into that, is that it? I’m like the guy who sent the dog down the hill after Galton?”
“There are degrees, Detective Bosch. Even if Church was the monster you claim, he didn’t have to die. If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? You see, that’s why I have to do what I’m going to do to you in there. For the innocents.”
“Well, good luck,” he said.
He put his own cigarette out.
“I won’t need it,” she said.
Bosch followed her gaze to the statue above the spot where Galton had killed himself. Chandler looked at it as if the blood were still there.
“That’s justice,” she said, nodding at the statue. “She doesn’t hear you. She doesn’t see you. She can’t feel you and won’t speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde.”
Chapter 16
The courtroom seemed as silent as a dead man’s heart while Bosch walked behind the plaintiff and defendant tables and in front of the jury box to get to the witness stand. After taking the oath he gave his full name and the clerk asked him to spell it.
“H—I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S B-O-S-C-H.”
Then the judge turned it over to Belk.
“Tell us a little bit about yourself, Detective Bosch, about your career.”
“I’ve been a police officer nearly twenty years. I currently am assigned to the homicide table at Hollywood Division. Before that-”
“Why do they call it a table?”
Jesus, Bosch thought.
“Because it’s like a table. It is six small desks pushed together to make a long table, three detectives on each side. It’s always called a table.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Before this assignment I spent eight years in Robbery-Homicide Division’s Homicide Special squad. Before that I was a detective on the homicide table in North Hollywood and robbery and burglary tables in Van Nuys. I was on patrol about five years, mostly in the Hollywood and Wilshire divisions.”
Belk slowly led him through his career up until the time he was on the Dollmaker task force. The questioning was slow and boring-even to Bosch, and it was his life. Every now and then he would look at the jurors when he answered a question and only a few seemed to be looking at him or paying attention. Bosch felt nervous and his palms were damp. He had testified in court at least a hundred times. But never like this, in his own defense. He felt hot though he knew the courtroom was overly cool.
“Now where was the task force physically located?”
“We used a second-floor storage room at the Hollywood station. It was an evidence and file storage room. We temporarily moved that stuff out into a rented trailer and used the room. We also had a room at Parker Center. The night shift, which I was on, generally worked out of Hollywood.”
“You were closer to the source, correct?”
“We thought so, yes. Most of the victims were taken from Hollywood streets. Many were later found in the area.”