Michael Connelly (24 page)
Driving the Mustang out of LAX an hour later, Bosch rolled the windows down and bathed his face in the cool, dry air. The sound of the breeze through the grove of eucalyptus trees at the airport gateway was always there like a welcome home. Somehow, he always found it reassuring when he came back from his trips. It was one of the things he loved about the city and he was glad it always greeted him.
He caught the light at Sepulveda and used the time to change the time on his watch. It was five minutes after two. He decided that he would have just enough time to get home, change into fresh clothes and grab something to eat before heading to Parker Center and his appointment with Carmen Hinojos.
He drove quickly under the 405 overpass and then took the curving on-ramp up onto the crowded freeway. As he turned the wheel to negotiate the turn, he realized that his upper arms ached deep in the biceps and he wasn’t sure if it was from his fight with the fish on Saturday or from the way Jasmine had gripped his arms while they made love. He thought about her for a few more minutes and decided he would call her at the house before heading downtown. Their parting that morning already seemed long ago to him. They had made promises to meet again as soon as possible and Bosch hoped the promises would be kept. She was a mystery to him, one in which he knew he had not yet even begun to scratch the surface.
The 10 wasn’t set to reopen until the following day, so Bosch bypassed the exit and stayed on the 405 until it rose over the Santa Monica Mountains and dropped into the Valley. He took the long way because he bet it would be faster, and because he had a mail drop in Studio City that he had been using since the post office refused to deliver mail to a red-tagged structure.
He transferred onto the 101 and promptly hit a wall of traffic inching its way along the six lanes. He stayed with it until impatience got the better of him. He exited Coldwater Canyon Boulevard and started taking surface streets. On Moorpark Road he passed several apartment buildings that still hadn’t been demolished or repaired, the red tags and yellow tape bleached near-white by the months in the sun. Many of the condemned buildings still had signs like $500
MOVES YOU IN
! and
NEWLY REMODELED
. On one red-tagged structure with the telltale crisscross stress fractures running along its entire length, someone had spray-painted a slogan that many took as the epitaph of the city in the months since the earthquake.
Somedays it was hard not to believe it. But Bosch tried to keep the faith. Somebody had to. The newspaper said more people were leaving than coming. But no matter, Bosch thought, I’m staying.
He cut over to Ventura and stopped at the private mailbox office. There was nothing but bills and junk mail in his box. He stopped at a deli next door and ordered the special, turkey on wholewheat with avocado and bean sprouts, to go. After that, he stayed on Ventura until it became Cahuenga and then took the turn off to Woodrow Wilson Drive and the climb up the hill to home. On the first curve he had to slow on the narrow road to squeeze by an LAPD squad car. He waved but he knew they wouldn’t know him. They would be out of North Hollywood Division. They didn’t wave back.
He followed his usual practice of parking a half block away from his house and then walking back. He decided to leave the satchel in the trunk because he might need the files downtown. He headed down the street to his house with his overnighter in one hand and the sandwich bag in the other.
As he got to the carport, he noticed a patrol car coming up the road. He watched it and noticed it was the same two patrolmen he had just passed. They had turned around for some reason. He waited at the curb to see if they would stop to ask him for directions or maybe an explanation of his wave, and because he didn’t want them to see him enter the condemned house. But the car drove by with neither of the patrolmen even looking at him. The driver had his eyes on the road and the passenger was talking into the radio microphone. It must be a call, Bosch thought. He waited until the car had gone around the next curve and then headed into the carport.
After opening the kitchen door, Bosch stepped in and immediately felt that something was amiss. He took two steps in before placing it. There was a foreign odor in the house, or at least the kitchen. It was the scent of perfume, he realized. No, he corrected, it was cologne. A man wearing cologne had either recently been in the house or was still there.
Bosch quietly placed his overnighter and the sandwich bag on the kitchen floor and reached to his waist. Old habits died hard. He still had no gun and he knew his backup was on the shelf in the closet near the front door. For a moment he thought about running out to the street in hopes of catching the patrol car but he knew it was long gone.
Instead, he opened a drawer and quietly withdrew a small paring knife. There were longer blades in there but the small knife would be easier to handle. He stepped toward the archway that led from the kitchen to the house’s front entry. At the threshold, still hidden from whoever might be out there, he stopped, tilted his head forward and listened. He could hear the low hiss of the freeway down the hill behind the house, but nothing from within. Nearly a minute of silence passed. He was about to step out of the kitchen when he heard a sound. It was the slight whisper of cloth moving. Maybe the crossing or uncrossing of legs. He knew someone was in the living room. And he knew by now that they would know that he knew.
“Detective Bosch,” a voice said from the silence of the house. “It is safe for you. You can come out.”
Bosch knew the voice but was operating at such an acute level of intensity, he couldn’t immediately compute it and place it. All he knew was that he had heard it before.
“It’s Assistant Chief Irving, Detective Bosch,” the voice said. “Could you please step out? That way you don’t get hurt and we don’t get hurt.”
Yes, that was the voice. Bosch relaxed, put the knife down on the counter, the sandwich bag in the refrigerator and stepped out of the kitchen. Irving was there, sitting in the living room chair. Two men in suits whom Bosch didn’t recognize sat on the couch. Looking around, Bosch could see his box of letters and cards from the closet sitting on the coffee table. He saw the murder book that he had left on the dining room table was sitting on the lap of one of the strangers. They had been searching his house, going through his things.
Bosch suddenly realized what had happened outside.
“I saw your lookout. Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Where’ve you been, Bosch?” one of the suits asked.
Bosch looked at him. Not a single glimmer of recognition hit him.
“Who the fuck are you?”
He bent down and picked the box of cards and letters up off the coffee table, where it had been in front of the man.
“Detective,” Irving said, “this is Lieutenant Angel Brockman and this is Earl Sizemore.”
Bosch nodded. He recognized one of the names.
“I’ve heard of you,” he said, looking at Brockman. “You’re the one who sent Bill Connors to the closet. That must’ve been good for IAD man of the month. Quite an honor.”
The sarcasm in Bosch’s voice was unmistakable, as he intended it to be. The closet was where most cops kept their guns while off duty; going to the closet was department slang for a cop killing himself. Connors was an old beat cop in Hollywood Division who had killed himself the year before while he was under IAD investigation for trading dime bags of heroin to runaway girls for sex. After he was dead, the runaways had admitted making up the complaints because Connors was always hassling them to move off his beat. He had been a good man but saw everything stacked against him and decided to go to the closet.
“That was his choice, Bosch. And now you’ve got yours. You want to tell us where you’ve been the last twenty-four?”
“You want to tell me what this is about?”
He heard a clunking sound coming from the bedroom.
“What the hell?” He walked to the door and saw another suit in his bedroom, standing over the open drawer of the night table. “Hey, fuckhead, get out of there. Get out now!”
Bosch stepped in and kicked the drawer closed. The man stepped back, raised his hands like a prisoner and walked out to the living room.
“And this is Jerry Toliver,” Irving added. “He’s with Lieutenant Brockman, IAD. Detective Sizemore has joined us here from RHD.”
“Fantastic,” Bosch said. “So everybody knows everybody. What’s going on?”
He looked at Irving as he said this, believing if he was going to get a straight answer from anyone here, it would be him. Irving was generally a straight shooter when it came to his dealings with Bosch.
“De— Harry, we have got to ask you some questions,” Irving said. “It would be best if we explain things later.”
Bosch could tell this one was serious.
“You got a warrant to be in here?”
“We’ll show it to you later,” Brockman said. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Downtown.”
Bosch had had enough run-ins with the Internal Affairs Division to know things were being handled differently here. Just the fact that Irving, the second-highest-ranking officer in the department, was with them was an indication of the gravity of the situation. He guessed it was more than their simply finding out about his private investigation. If it was just that, Irving wouldn’t have been here. There was something terribly wrong.
“All right,” Bosch said, “who’s dead?”
All four looked at him with faces of stone, confirming that in fact someone was dead. Bosch felt his chest tighten and for the first time he began to be scared. The names and faces of people he had involved flashed through his mind. Meredith Roman, Jake McKittrick, Keisha Russell, the two women in Las Vegas. Who else? Jazz? Could he have possibly put her in some kind of danger? Then it hit him. Keisha Russell. The reporter had probably done what he told her not to. She had gone to Conklin or Mittel and asked questions about the old clip she had pulled for Bosch. She had walked in blindly and was now dead because of her mistake.
“Keisha Russell?” he asked.
He got no reply. Irving stood up and the others followed. Sizemore kept the murder book in his hand. He was going to take it. Brockman went into the kitchen, picked up the overnighter and carried it to the door.
“Harry, why don’t you ride with Earl and I?” Irving said.
“How ’bout I meet you guys down there.”
“You ride with me.”
It was said sternly. It invited no further debate. Bosch raised his hands, acknowledging he had no choice, and moved toward the door.
Bosch sat in the back of Sizemore’s LTD, directly behind Irving. He looked out the window as they went down the hill. He kept thinking of the young reporter’s face. Her eagerness had killed her but Bosch couldn’t help but share the blame. He had planted the seed of mystery in her mind and it had grown until she couldn’t resist it.
“Where’d they find her?” he asked.
He was met only with silence. He couldn’t understand why they said nothing, especially Irving. The assistant chief had led him to believe in the past that they had an understanding, if not a liking, between each other.
“I told her not to do anything,” he said. “I told her to sit on it a few days.”
Irving turned his body so that he could partially see Bosch behind him.
“Detective, I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”
“Keisha Russell.”
“Don’t know her.”
He turned back around. Bosch was puzzled. The names and faces went through his mind again. He added Jasmine but then subtracted her. She knew nothing about the case.
“McKittrick?”
“Detective,” Irving said and again struggled to turn around to look at Bosch. “We are involved in the investigation of the homicide of Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. These other names are not involved. If you think they are people that should be contacted, please let me know.”
Bosch was too stunned to answer. Harvey Pounds? That made no sense. He had nothing to do with the case, didn’t even know about it. Pounds never left the office, how could he have gotten into danger? Then it came to him, washing over him like a wave of water that brought with it a chill. He understood. It made sense. And in the moment that he saw that it did, he also saw his own responsibility as well as his own predicament.
“Am I . . . ?”
He couldn’t finish.
“Yes,” Irving said. “You are currently considered a suspect. Now maybe you will be quiet until we can set up a formal interview.”
Bosch leaned his head against the window glass and closed his eyes.
“Ah, Jesus . . .”
And in that moment he realized he was no better than Brockman was for having sent a man to the closet. For Bosch knew in the dark part of his heart that he was responsible. He didn’t know how or when it had happened but he knew.
He had killed Harvey Pounds. And he carried Pounds’s badge in his pocket.
Bosch was numb to most of what was going on around him. After they reached Parker Center he was escorted up to Irving’s office on the sixth floor and then placed in a chair in the adjoining conference room. He was in there alone for a half hour before Brockman and Toliver came in. Brockman sat directly across from Bosch, Toliver to Harry’s right. It was obvious to Bosch by their being in Irving’s conference room instead of an IAD interview room that Irving wanted to keep a tight control on this one. If it turned out to be a cop-killed-cop case, he’d need all the control he could muster to contain it. It could be a publicity debacle to rival those of the Rodney King days.
Through his daze and the jarring images of Pounds being dead, a pressing thought finally got Bosch’s attention: he was in serious trouble himself. He told himself he couldn’t retreat into a shell. He must be alert. The man sitting across from him would like nothing better than to hang a killing on Bosch and he was willing to go to any extreme to do it. It wasn’t good enough that Bosch knew in his own mind that he had not, at least physically, killed Pounds. He had to defend himself. And so he resolved that he would show Brockman nothing. He would be just as tough as anybody in the room. He cleared his throat and began before Brockman got the chance.
“When did it happen?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
“I can save you time, Brockman. Tell me when it happened and I’ll tell you where I was. We’ll get this over with. I understand why I’m a suspect. I won’t hold it against you but you’re wasting your time.”
“Bosch, don’t you feel anything at all? A man is dead. You worked with him.”
Bosch stared at him a long moment before answering in an even voice.
“What I feel doesn’t matter. Nobody deserves to be killed, but I’m not going to miss him and I certainly won’t miss working for him.”
“Jesus.” Brockman shook his head. “The man had a wife, a kid in college.”
“Maybe they won’t miss him, either. You never know. The guy was a prick at work. No reason to expect him to be anything else at home. What’s your wife think about you, Brockman?”
“Save it, Bosch. I’m not falling for any of your—”
“Do you believe in God, Brickman?”
Bosch used Brockman’s nickname in the department, awarded to him for his methodical way of building cases against other cops, like the late Bill Connors.
“This isn’t about me or what I believe in, Bosch. We’re talking about you.”
“That’s right, we’re talking about me. So, I’ll tell you what I think. I’m not sure what I believe. My life’s more than half over and I still haven’t figured it out. But the theory I’m leaning toward is that everybody on this planet has some kind of energy that makes them what they are. It’s all about energy. And when you die, it just goes somewhere else. And Pounds? He was bad energy and now it’s gone somewhere else. So I don’t feel too bad about him dying, to answer your question. But I’d like to know where that bad energy went. Hope you didn’t get any, Brickman. You already have a lot.”
He winked at Brockman and saw the momentary confusion in the IAD detective’s face as he tried to interpret what the jibe had meant. He seemed to shake it off and go on.
“Enough of the bullshit. Why did you confront Lieutenant Pounds in his office on Thursday? You know that was off limits while you are on leave.”
“Well, it was kind of like one of those Catch-22 situations. I think that’s what they call ’em. It was off limits to go there but then Pounds, my commanding officer, called me up and told me I had to turn in my car. See, it was that bad energy working. I was already on involuntary leave but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to take my car, too. So I brought him in the keys. He was my supervisor and it was an order. So going there broke one of the rules but not going would have broken one, too.”
“Why’d you threaten him?”
“I didn’t.”
“He filed an addendum to the assault complaint of two weeks earlier.”
“I don’t care what he filed. There was no threat. The guy was a coward. He probably felt threatened. But there was no threat. There is a difference.”
Bosch looked over at the other suit. Toliver. It looked as if he was going to be silent the whole time. That was his role. He just stared at Bosch as if he were a TV screen.
Bosch looked around the rest of the room and for the first time noticed the phone on the banquette to the left of the table. The green light signaled a conference call was on. The interview was being piped out of the room. Probably to a tape recorder. Probably to Irving in his office next door.
“There is a witness,” Brockman said.
“To what?”
“The threat.”
“I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant, why don’t you tell me exactly what the threat was so I know what we’re talking about. After all, if you believe I made it, what’s wrong with me knowing what it was I said?”
Brockman gave it some thought before answering.
“Very simple, as most are, you told him if he ever, quote, fucked with you again, you’d kill him. Not too original.”
“But damning as hell, right? Well, fuck you, Brockman, I never said that. I don’t doubt that that asshole wrote up an addendum, that was just his style, but whoever this wit is you got, they’re full of shit.”
“You know Henry Korchmar?”
“Henry Korchmar?”
Bosch had no idea whom he was talking about. Then he realized Brockman meant old Henry of the Nod Squad. Bosch had never known his last name and so hearing it in this context had confused him.
“The old guy? He wasn’t in the room. He’s no witness. I told him to get out and he did. Whatever he told you, he probably backed Pounds because he was scared. But he wasn’t there. You go ahead with it, Brockman. I’ll be able to pull twelve people out of that squadroom who watched the whole thing through the glass. And they’ll say Henry wasn’t in there, they’ll say Pounds was a liar and everybody knew it, and then where’s your threat?”
Brockman said nothing into the silence so Bosch continued.
“See, you didn’t do your work. My guess is that you know everybody who works in that squadroom thinks people like you are the bottom feeders of this department. They’ve got more respect for the people they put in jail. And you know that, Brickman, so you were too intimidated to go to them. Instead, you rely on some old man’s word and he probably didn’t even know Pounds was dead when you talked to him.”
Bosch could tell by the way Brockman’s eyes darted away that he had nailed him. Empowered with the victory, he stood up and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To get some water.”
“Jerry, go with him.”
Bosch paused at the door and looked back.
“What, do you think I’m going to run, Brockman? You think that and you don’t know the first thing about me. You think that and you haven’t prepared for this interview. Why don’t you come over to Hollywood one day and I’ll teach you how to interview murder suspects. Free of charge.”
Bosch walked out, Toliver following. At the water fountain down the hall, he took a long drink of water and then wiped his mouth with his hand. He felt nervous, frayed. He didn’t know how long it would be before Brockman could see through the front he was putting up.
As he walked back to the conference room, Toliver stayed a silent three paces behind him.
“You’re still young,” Bosch said over his shoulder. “There might be a chance for you, Toliver.”
Bosch stepped back into the conference room just as Brockman stepped through a door from the other side of the room. Bosch knew it was a direct entrance to Irving’s office. He had once worked an investigation of a serial killer out of this room and under Irving’s thumb.
Both men sat down across from each other again.
“Now, then,” Brockman started. “I’m going to read you your rights, Detective Bosch.”
He took a small card from his wallet and proceeded to read to Bosch the Miranda warning. Bosch knew for sure the phone line was going to a tape recorder. This was something they would want on tape.
“Now,” Brockman said when he was finished. “Do you agree to waive those rights and talk to us about this situation?”
“It’s a situation now, huh? I thought it was a murder. Yeah, I’ll waive.”
“Jerry, go get a waiver, I don’t have one here.”
Jerry got up and left through the hallway door. Bosch could hear his feet moving quickly on the linoleum, then a door open. He was taking the stairs down to IAD on the fifth.
“Uh, let’s start by—”
“Don’t you want to wait until you have your witness back? Or is this being secretly recorded without my knowledge?”
This immediately flustered Brockman.
“Yes, Bosch it’s being sec— it’s being recorded. But not secretly. We told you before we started that we’d be taping.”
“Good cover-up, Lieutenant. That last line, that was a good one. I’ll have to remember that one.”
“Now, let’s start with—”
The door opened and Toliver came in with a sheet of paper. He handed it to Brockman, who studied it a moment, made sure it was the correct form and slid it across the table to Bosch. Harry grabbed it and quickly scribbled a signature on the appropriate line. He was familiar with the form. He slid it back and Brockman put it off to the side of the table without looking at it. So he didn’t notice the signature Bosch had written was “Fuck You.”
“All right, let’s get this going. Bosch, give us your whereabouts over the last seventy-two hours.”
“You don’t want to search me first, do you? How ’bout you, Jerry?”
Bosch stood up, opening his jacket so they could see he was not armed. He thought by taunting them like this they would do the exact opposite and not search him. Carrying Pounds’s badge was a piece of evidence that would probably put him in the ground if they discovered it.
“Siddown, Bosch!” Brockman barked. “We’re not going to search you. We’re trying to give you every benefit of the doubt but you make it damn hard.”
Bosch sat back down, relieved for the time being.
“Now, just give us your whereabouts. We don’t have all day.”
Bosch thought about this. He was surprised by the window of time they wanted. Seventy-two hours. He wondered what had happened to Pounds and why they hadn’t narrowed time of death to a shorter span.
“Seventy-two hours ago. Well, about seventy-two hours ago it was Friday afternoon and I was in Chinatown at the Fifty-One-Fifty building. Which reminds me, I’m due over there in ten minutes. So, boys, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
He stood up.
“Siddown, Bosch. That’s been taken care of. Sit down.”
Bosch sat down and said nothing. He realized, though, that he actually felt disappointed he would miss the session with Carmen Hinojos.
“Come on, Bosch, let’s hear it. What happened after that?”
“I don’t remember all the details. But I ate over at the Red Wind that night, also stopped at the Epicentre for a few drinks. Then I got to the airport about ten. I took a red-eye to Florida, to Tampa, spent the weekend there and got back about an hour and a half before I found you people illegally inside my home.”
“It’s not illegal. We had a warrant.”
“I’ve been shown no warrant.”
“Never mind that, what do you mean you were in Florida?”
“I guess I mean I was in Florida. What do you think it means?”
“You can prove this?”
Bosch reached into his pocket, took out his airline folder with the ticket receipt and slid it across the table.
“For starters there’s the ticket receipt. I think there’s one in there for a rental car, too.”
Brockman quickly opened the ticket folder and started reading.
“What were you doing there?” he asked without looking up.
“Dr. Hinojos, that’s the company shrink, said I should try to get away. And I thought, how ’bout Florida? I’d never been there and all my life I’ve liked orange juice. I thought, what the hell? Florida.”
Brockman was flustered again. He wasn’t expecting something like this. Bosch could tell. Most cops never realized how important the initial interview with a suspect or witness was to an investigation. It informed all other interviews and even court testimony that followed. You had to be prepared. Like lawyers, you had to know most of the answers before you asked the questions. The IAD relied so much on its presence as an intimidating factor that most of the detectives assigned to the division never really had to prepare for interviews. And when they hit a wall like this, they didn’t know what to do.
“Okay, Bosch, uh, what did you do in Florida?”
“You ever heard that song Marvin Gaye sang? Before he got killed? It’s called—”
“What are you talking about?”
“— ‘Sexual Healing.’ It says it’s good for the soul.”
“I’ve heard it,” Toliver said.
Both Brockman and Bosch looked at him.
“Sorry,” he offered.
“Again, Bosch,” Brockman said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that I spent most of the time with a woman I know there. Most of the other time I spent with a fishing guide on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. What I’m talking about, asshole, is that I was with people almost every minute. And the times I wasn’t weren’t long enough for me to fly back here and kill Pounds. I don’t even know when he was killed but I’ll tell you right now you don’t have a case, Brockman, because there is no case. You’re looking in the wrong direction.”
