The Reversal

“Well, let’s look at the abduction first. It is pretty clear from the witness testimony and everything else that this was not a crime of great planning and patience. This was an impulse crime. That much they’ve had right from the beginning. We can talk about the motivating factors at length in a little while, but suffice it to say, something caused Jessup to act out in an almost uncontrollable way.”

“I think I might have motivating factors covered,” Bosch said.

“Good, I’m eager to hear about it. But for now, we will assume that some sort of internal pressure led Jessup to act on an undeniable impulse and he grabbed the girl. He took her back to the truck and took off. He obviously didn’t know about the sister hiding in the bushes and that she would sound the alarm. So he completes the abduction and drives away, but within minutes he hears the report about the abduction on the police scanner he has in the truck. That brings home to him the reality of what he’s done and what his predicament is. He never imagined things would move so fast. He more or less comes to his senses. He realizes he must abandon his plan now and move into preservation mode. He needs to kill the girl to eliminate her as a witness and then hide her body in order to prevent his arrest.”

Bosch nodded as he understood her theory.

“So what you’re saying is, the crime that occurred was not the crime that he intended.”

“Correct. He abandoned the true plan.”

“So when Kloster went to the bureau looking for similars, he was looking for the wrong thing.”

“Right again.”

“But could there actually have been a plan? You just said yourself that it was a crime of compulsion. He saw an opportunity and within a few seconds acted on it. What plan could there have been?”

“Actually, it is more than likely that he had a complex and complete plan. Killers like these have a paraphilia-a set construct of the perfect psychosexual experience. They fantasize about it in great detail. And as you can expect, it often involves torture and murder. The paraphilia is part of their daily fantasy life and it builds to the point where the desire becomes the urge which eventually becomes a compulsion to act out. When they do cross that line and act out, the abduction of the victim may be completely unplanned and improvisational, but the killing sequence is not. The victim is unfortunately dropped into a set construct that has played over and over in the killer’s mind.”

Bosch looked at his notebook and realized he had stopped taking notes.

“Okay, but you’re saying that didn’t happen here,” he said. “He abandoned the plan. He heard the abduction report on the scanner, and that took him from fantasy to reality. He realized that they could be closing in on him. He killed her and dumped her, hoping to avoid detection.”

“Exactly. And therefore, as you just noted, when investigators attempted to compare elements of this murder to others’, they were comparing apples and oranges. They found nothing that matched and believed that this was a onetime crime of opportunity and compulsion. I don’t think it was.”

Bosch looked up from the photos to Rachel’s eyes.

“You think he did this before.”

“I think the idea that he had acted out before in this way is compelling. It would not surprise me if you were to find that he was involved in other abductions.”

“You’re talking about more than twenty-four years ago.”

“I know. And since there was no linking of Jessup to known unsolved murders, we are probably talking about missing children and runaways. Cases where there was never a crime scene established. The girls were never found.”

Bosch thought of Jessup’s middle-of-the-night visits to the parks along Mulholland Drive. He thought he might now know why Jessup would light a candle at the base of a tree.

Then a more stunning and scary thought pushed through.

“Do you think a guy like this would use those crimes from so long ago to feed his fantasy now?”

“Of course he would. He’s been in prison, what other choice did he have?”

Bosch felt an urgency take hold inside. An urgency that came with the growing certainty that they weren’t dealing with an isolated instance of murder. If Walling’s theory was correct, and he had no reason to doubt it, Jessup was a repeater. And though he had been on ice for twenty-four years, he was now roaming the city freely. It would not be long now before he became vulnerable to the pressures and urges that had driven him to deadly action before.

Bosch came to a fast resolve. The next time Jessup was seized by the pressures of his life and overcome by the compulsion to kill, Bosch was going to be there to destroy him.

His eyes refocused and he realized Rachel was looking at him oddly.

“Thank you for all of this, Rachel,” he said. “I think I need to go.”

Nineteen

Thursday, March 4, 9 A.M.