The Closers Read Online Free PDF Page B

made. And it went cold.
    “Until now,” Bosch said out loud without realizing it.
    “What?” Rider asked.
    “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
    “You want to start talking about it?”
    “Not yet. I want to finish reading first. You’re done?”
    “Just about.”
    “You know who we have to thank for this, don’t you?” Bosch asked.
    She looked at him quizzically.
    “I give up.”
    “Mel Gibson.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “When did
Lethal Weapon
come out? Right around this time, right?”
    “I guess. But what are you talking about? Those movies were so far-fetched.”
    “That’s my point. That’s the movie that started all of this holding the gun sideways and with two hands, one over the other. We got blood on this gun because the shooter was a
Lethal Weapon
fan.”
    Rider shook her head dismissively.
    “You watch,” Bosch said. “I’m going to ask the guy when we bring him in.”
    “Okay, Harry, you ask him.”
    “Mel Gibson saved a lot of lives. All those sideways shooters, they couldn’t hit shit. We ought to make him like an honorary cop or something.”
    “Okay, Harry, I’m going to go back to reading, okay? I want to get through this.”
    “Yeah, okay. Me too.”

5
    SHORTLY AFTER the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit began operation the DNA evidence from the Verloren case was forwarded to the California Department of Justice. It was delivered to the DNA lab along with evidence from dozens of other cases drawn from the unit’s initial survey of the department’s unsolved murders. The DOJ operated the state’s primary DNA database. The backlog of comparison requests to the underfunded and undermanned lab was running more than a year at the time. But thanks to the tide of requests from the new LAPD unit it took almost eighteen months before the Verloren evidence was re-typed by DOJ analysts and compared to thousands of DNA profiles in the state data bank. It produced a single match, a “cold hit” in the parlance of DNA work.
    Bosch looked at the single-page DOJ report unfolded in front of him. It stated that twelve of a possible fourteen markers matched the DNA from the weapon used to murder Rebecca Verloren to a now thirty-five-year-old man named Roland Mackey. He was a native of Los Angeles whose last known address was in Panorama City. Bosch felt his blood start moving a little faster as he read the cold hit report. Panorama City was in the San Fernando Valley, not more than fifteen minutes from Chatsworth, even in bad traffic. It added a level of credibility to the match. It was not that Bosch didn’t believe the science. He did. But he also believed you needed more than the science to convince a jury beyond a doubt. You needed to bolster the scientific fact with connections of circumstantial evidence and common sense. This was one of those connections.
    Bosch noticed the date on the cover letter of the DOJ report.
    “You said we just got this?” he asked Rider.
    “Yeah. I think it came in Friday. Why?”
    “The date on it is from two Fridays ago. Ten days.”
    Rider shrugged.
    “Bureaucracy,” she said. “I guess it took its time getting down here from Sacramento.”
    “I know the case is old but you’d think they’d move a little faster than that.”
    Rider didn’t respond. Bosch dropped it and read on. Mackey’s DNA was in the DOJ computer base because all offenders convicted of any sex-related crime in California were forced under state law to submit blood and oral swabs for typing and inclusion in the DNA data bank. The offense that resulted in Mackey’s DNA going into the bank was on the far margin of the state mandate. Two years earlier Mackey was convicted of lewd behavior in Los Angeles. The DOJ report did not offer details of the crime but stated Mackey was placed on twelve months probation, an indication that his was a minor offense.
    Bosch was about to write a note on his pad when he looked up and saw Rider closing the murder book on the second half