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Back Brass Verdict Save as PDF
Chapters (64)
  1. PART ONE
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. PART TWO
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. PART THREE
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. PART FOUR
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. PART FIVE
  52. Forty-seven
  53. Forty-eight
  54. Forty-nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-one
  57. Fifty-two
  58. Fifty-three
  59. PART SIX
  60. Fifty-four
  61. Fifty-five
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. About the Author
  64. ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

“My name is Nina. You can call me that if you want.”

“Good. And you can call me Mickey.”

The stairs led to a door that opened into a bedroom suite the size of some courtrooms I had been in. It was so big it had twin fireplaces on the north and south walls. There was a sitting area, a sleeping area and his-and-her bathrooms. Nina Albrecht pushed a button near the door, and the curtains covering the west view silently began to split and reveal a wall of glass that looked out over the sea.

The custom-made bed was double the size of a regular king. It had been stripped of the top mattress and all linens and pillows and I assumed these had been taken for forensic analysis. In two locations in the room, six-foot-square segments of carpet had been cut out, again, I believed, for the collection and analysis of blood evidence.

On the wall next to the door, there were blood-spatter marks that had been circled and marked with letter codes by investigators. There were no other signs of the violence that had occurred in the room.

I walked to the corner by the glass wall and looked back into the room. I raised the camera and took a few shots from different angles. Nina walked into the shot a couple times but it didn’t matter. The photos weren’t for court. I would use them to refresh my memory of the place while I was working out the trial strategy.

A murder scene is a map. If you know how to read it, you can sometimes find your way. The lay of the land, the repose of victims in death, the angle of views and light and blood. The spatial restrictions and geometric differentiations were all elements of the map. You can’t always get all of that from a police photo. Sometimes you have to see it for yourself. This is why I had come to the house in Malibu. For the map. For the geography of murder. When I understood it, I would be ready to go to trial.

From the corner, I looked at the square cut out of the white carpet near the bedroom door. This is where the male victim, Johan Rilz, had been shot down. My eyes traveled to the bed, where Mitzi Elliot had been shot, her naked body sprawled diagonally across it.

The investigative summary in the file suggested that the naked couple had heard an intruder in the house. Rilz went to the bedroom door and opened it, only to be immediately surprised by the killer. Rilz was shot down in the doorway and the killer stepped over his body and into the room.