The Crossing by Michael Connelly Read Free Book Online

had had many interactions with Sheriff’s homicide investigators, he knew neither of them. This was a handicap because he had no measure of their skills or temperaments as he moved into their written work. He knew some of it would surface as he learned of their investigative moves and conclusions but Bosch still felt like he was behind the curve. He knew other investigators in the Sheriff’s homicide bureau he could call to discuss the pair, but he didn’t dare do that and possibly reveal that he was working against them. Word of Bosch’s betrayal to the cause would spread rapidly and jump from the Sheriff’s Department to the LAPD in hours if not minutes. Bosch didn’t want that. Yet.
    The first seventy-five pages of the chrono documented the moves of the investigation before the DNA connection was made to Da’Quan Foster. Bosch carefully read these pages anyway because they gave insight into the investigators’ initial case theory as well as their thoroughness and determination. Lexi Parks’s husband was fully investigated and cleared and the efforts were well documented in the chrono. Though he had an ironclad alibi—involved in the pursuit and arrest of a car thief—for the time of his wife’s murder, the investigators were smart enough to know that he could have set the murder up to be carried out by others. Even though aspects of the murder—the sexual attack and brutality of the fatal beating—tended to point in another direction, the investigators were undaunted in their look at the husband. Bosch found a growing respect for Cornell and Schmidt as he read through these sequences in the chrono.
    The early investigation also went in many other directions. The investigators interviewed a multitude of sex offenders living in the West Hollywood area, probed the victim’s personal background for enemies, and looked through her job activities and history for people she may have angered or who could have held grudges.
    All of these efforts hit dead ends. Once they had DNA from the killer, it was used to clear anyone who even remotely approached suspect status. The victim’s personal background produced no deep conflicts, no spurned lovers, and no extramarital activity on her or her husband’s part. As an assistant city manager her reach into the city’s bureaucracy and politics was substantial, yet she carried the final say on few items of business and on none that were controversial.
    A profile of the murderer drawn from the details of the crime scene was what eventually pointed the investigation away from the victim’s personal and professional life. The profile, put together by the Sheriff’s Department Behavioral Science Unit, concluded that the suspect was a psychopath who was filling a complex of psychological needs in the murder of Lexi Parks.
No kidding
, Bosch thought as he read the conclusion.
    The profile stated that the killer was most likely a stranger to Parks and that she could have crossed his path anywhere recently or long ago. Because she was a public figure who appeared regularly on West Hollywood’s public-access cable channel as well as at public events, the circle of possibilities was even greater. Her killer could have simply seen her on the news or at a televised city council meeting. The crossing could have happened anywhere.
    The killing seemed to be both carefully planned and reckless in terms of the overkill in violence and the DNA evidence left behind. Other crime scene details that influenced the profile included the fact that the victim had not been tied up in any way—indicating the killer did not need bindings to overpower and control her. The victim was also found by her husband with a pillow over her face, hiding the intense damage of the fatal beating from view and possibly indicating remorse on the part of the killer.
    Since her husband was a law enforcement officer, several security measures had been installed in the home, including an alarm system and multiple locks