The Reversal

“Is this what I think it is?” she asked. “They all look like Melissa Landy.”

“Well,” Bosch said. “Let me just go over it and you’ll draw your own conclusions.”

Bosch stayed on his feet. He moved around the table to the whiteboard. With his back to the board he started to tell the story.

“Okay, I have a friend. She’s a former profiler. I’ve never-”

“For whom?” Haller asked.

“The FBI, but does it matter? What I’m saying is that I’ve never known anybody who was better at it. So, shortly after I came into this I asked her informally to take a look at the case files and she did. Her conclusions were that back in ’eighty-six this case was read all wrong. And where the original investigators saw a crime of impulse and opportunity, she saw something different. To keep it short, she saw indications that the person who killed Melissa Landy may have killed before.”

“Here we go,” Haller said.

“Look, man, I don’t know why you’re giving me the attitude,” Bosch said. “You pulled me in as investigator on this thing and I’m investigating. Why don’t you just let me tell you what I know? Then you can do with it whatever you want. You think it’s legit, then run with it. You don’t, then shitcan it. I will have done my job by bringing it to you.”

“I’m not giving you any attitude, Harry. I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking about all the things that can complicate a trial. Complicate discovery. You realize that everything you are telling us has to be turned over to Royce now?”

“Only if you intend to use it.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d know the rules of discovery better than me.”

“I know the rules. Why did you bring us here for this dog and pony show if you don’t think we should use it?”

“Why don’t you just let him tell the story,” McPherson said. “And then maybe we’ll understand.”

“Then, go ahead,” Haller said. “Anyway, all I said was ‘Here we go,’ which I think is a pretty common phrase indicating surprise and change of direction. That’s all. Continue, Harry. Please.”

Bosch glanced back at the board for a moment and then turned back to his audience of two and continued.

“So my friend the profiler thinks Jason Jessup killed before he killed Melissa Landy, and most likely was successful in hiding his involvement in these previous crimes.”

“So you went looking,” McPherson said.

“I did. Now, remember our original investigator, Kloster, was no slouch. He went looking, too. Only problem was he was using the wrong profile. They had semen on the dress, strangulation and a body dump in an accessible location. That was the profile, so that is what he went looking for and he found no similars, or at least no cases that connected. End of story, end of search. They believed Jessup acted out this one time, was exceedingly disorganized and sloppy, and got caught.”

Harry turned and gestured to the row of photographs on the whiteboard behind him.

“So I went a different way. I went looking for girls who were reported missing and never showed up again. Girls reported as runaways as well as possible abductions. Jessup is from Riverside County so I expanded the search to include Riverside and L.A. counties. Since Jessup was twenty-four when he was arrested I went back to when he was eighteen, putting the search limits from nineteen eighty to ’eighty-six. As far as victim profile, I went Caucasian aged twelve to eighteen.”

“Why did you go as old as eighteen?” McPherson asked. “Our victim was twelve.”

“Rachel said-I mean, the profiler said that sometimes starting out, these people pick from their own peer group. They learn how to kill and then they start to define their targets according to their paraphilias. A paraphilia is-”

“I know what it is,” McPherson said. “You did all of this work yourself? Or did this Rachel help you?”

“No, she just worked up the profile. I had some help from my partner pulling all of this together. But it was tough because not all the records are complete, especially on cases that never got above runaway status, and a lot was cleared out. Most of the runaway files from back then are gone.”

“They didn’t digitize?” McPherson asked.

Bosch shook his head.

“Not in L.A. County. They prioritized when they switched over to computerized records and went back and captured records for major crimes. No runaway cases unless there was the possibility of abduction involved. Riverside County was different. Fewer cases out there so they archived everything digitally. Anyway, for that time period in these two counties, we came up with twenty-nine cases over the six-year period we’re looking at. Again, these were unresolved cases. In each the girl disappeared and never came home. We pulled what records we could find and most didn’t fit because of witness statements or other issues. But I couldn’t rule out these eight.”

Bosch turned to the board and looked at the photos of eight smiling girls. All of them long gone over time.