The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,30
it was for me. I don't know about the detectives. My report said—”
“I'm sure for the detectives it was the bullet that killed him that was the clincher.”
“Objection,” Belk yelled angrily as he stood. “Your Honor, she can't—”
“Ms. Chandler,” Judge Keyes boomed. “I have warned you both about exactly this sort of thing. Why would you go and say something you know full well is prejudicial and out of order?”
“I apologize, Your Honor.”
“Well, it's a little late for apologies. We'll discuss this matter after the jury goes home for the day.”
The judge then instructed the jurors to disregard her comment. But Bosch knew it had been a carefully thought out gambit by Chandler. The jurors would now see her even more as the underdog. Even the judge was against her—which he really wasn't. And they might be distracted, thinking about what just happened, when Belk stepped up to repair Amado's testimony.
“Nothing further, Your Honor,” Chandler said.
“Mr. Belk,” the judge said.
Don't say just a few questions again, Bosch thought as his lawyer moved to the lectern.
“Just a few questions, Mr. Amado,” Belk said. “Plaintiff's counsel mentioned DNA and serology tests and you said they had not been done. Why is that?”
“Well, because there was nothing to test. No semen was ever recovered from any of the bodies. The killer had used a condom. Without samples to attempt to match to Mr. Church's DNA or blood, there was not much point in running tests. We would have the victims' but nothing to compare it to.”
Belk drew a line with his pen through a question written on his pad.
“If there was no recovery of semen or sperm, how do you know these women were raped or even had engaged in consensual sexual activity?”
“The autopsies of all eleven of the victims showed vaginal bruising, much more than is considered usual or even possible from consensual sex. On two of the victims there was even tearing in the vaginal wall. The victims were brutally raped, in my estimation.”
“But these women came from walks of life where sexual activity was common and frequent, even ‘rough sex,’ if you will. Two of them performed in pornographic videos. How can you be sure they were sexually assaulted against their will?”
“The bruising was such that it would have been very painful, especially for the two with vaginal tears. Hemorrhaging was considered perimortem, meaning at the time of death. The deputy coroners who performed these autopsies unanimously concluded these women were raped.”
Belk drew another line on his pad, flipped the page and came up with a new question. He was doing well with Amado, Bosch thought. Better than Money had. It may have been a mistake for her to have called him as a witness.
“How do you know that the killer used a condom?” Belk asked. “Couldn't these women have been raped with an object and that account for the lack of semen?”
“That could have happened and it could account for some of the damage. But there was clear evidence in five of the cases that they had had sex with a man wearing a condom.”
“And what was that?”
“We did rape kits. There was—”
“Hold it a second, Mr. Amado. What is a rape kit?”
“It's a protocol for collecting evidence from bodies of people that may have been the victims of rape. In the case of a woman, we take vaginal and anal swabs, we comb the pubic area looking for foreign pubic hair, procedures such as that. We also take samples of blood and hair from the victim in case there is a call for comparison to evidence found on a suspect. It's collected together in an evidence kit.”
“Okay. Before I interrupted there, you were going to tell us about the evidence found in five of the victims that was indicative of sex with a man who wore a condom.”
“Yes, we did the rape kits each time we got a Dollmaker victim. And there was a foreign substance found in vaginal samplings in five of the victims. It was the same material in each of the women.”
“What was it, Mr. Amado?”
“It was identified as a condom lubricant.”
“Was this material something that could be identified to a specific brand and style of condom?”
Looking at Belk, Bosch could see the heavy man was champing at the bit. Amado was answering each question slowly and each time Bosch could see that Belk could barely wait for the answer before plowing ahead with a new question. Belk was on a roll.