The Reversal

Bosch had spent several days studying the original case file and knew everything that Walling was telling him. But he let her run with it without interruption because he had a feeling she would take him somewhere new. That was her beauty and art. It didn’t matter that the FBI didn’t recognize it and use her to the best of her abilities. He always would.

“I think what happened was that this case had a faulty profile from the beginning. Add to that the fact that back then the data banks were obviously not as sophisticated or as inclusive as they are now. This whole angle was misdirected and wrong and so no wonder they hit a dead end with it.”

Bosch nodded and wrote a quick note.

“You tried to rebuild the profile?” he asked.

“As much as I could. And the starting point is right here. The photos. Take a look at her injuries.”

Bosch leaned across the table and over the first row of photographs. He actually didn’t see injuries to the girl. She had been dropped haphazardly into the almost full trash bin. There must have been stage building or a renovation project going on inside the theater, because the bin contained mostly construction refuse. Sawdust, paint buckets, small pieces of cut and broken wood. There were small cuts of wallboard and torn plastic sheeting. Melissa Landy was faceup near one of the corners of the Dumpster. Bosch didn’t see a drop of blood on her or her dress.

“What injuries are we talking about?” he asked.

Walling stood up in order to lean over. She used the point of a pen to outline the places she wanted Bosch to look on each of the photos. She circled discolorations on the victim’s neck.

“Her neck injuries,” she said. “If you look you see the oval-shaped bruising on the right side of the neck, and on the other side you have a larger corresponding bruise. This evidence makes it clear that she was choked to death with one hand.”

She used the pen to illustrate what she was saying.

“The thumb here on her right side and the four fingers on the left. One-handed. Now, why one-handed?”

She sat back down and Bosch leaned back away from the photos himself. The idea that Melissa had been strangled with one hand was not new to Bosch. It was in Kloster’s original profile of the murder.

“Twenty-four years ago, it was suggested that Jessup strangled the girl with his right hand while he masturbated with his left. This theory was built on one thing-the semen collected from the victim’s dress. It was deposited by someone with the same blood type as Jessup and so it was assumed to have come from him. You follow all of this?”

“I’m with you.”

“Okay, so the problem is, we now know that the semen didn’t come from Jessup and so the basic profile or theory of the crime in nineteen eighty-six is wrong. It is further demonstrated as being wrong because Jessup is right-handed according to a sample of his writing in the files, and studies have shown that with right-handers masturbation is almost always carried out by the dominant hand.”

“They’ve done studies on that?”

“You’d be surprised. I sure was when I went online to look for this.”

“I knew there was something wrong with the Internet.”

She smiled but was not a bit embarrassed by the subject matter of their discussion. It was all in a day’s work.

“They’ve done studies on everything, including which hand people use to wipe their butts. I actually found it to be fascinating reading. But the point here is that they had this wrong from the beginning. This murder did not occur during a sex act. Now let me show you a few other photos.”

She 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?”