Michael Connelly (89 page)

Bosch nodded once. Irving turned and glanced quickly at Garwood before leaving the room.

4

“Harry, you have a smoke?”

“Sorry, Cap, I’m trying to quit.”

“Me, too. I guess all that really means is that you borrow ’em rather than buy ’em.”

Garwood stepped away from the corner and blew out his breath. With his foot he moved a stack of boxes away from the wall and sat down on them. He looked old and tired to Bosch but then he had looked that way twelve years before when Bosch had gone to work for him. Garwood didn’t raise any particular feelings in Bosch. He had been the aloof sort of supervisor. Didn’t socialize with the squad after hours, didn’t spend much time out of his office and in the bullpen. At the time, Bosch thought maybe that was good. It didn’t engender a lot of loyalty from Garwood’s people, but it didn’t create any enmity either. Maybe that was how Garwood had lasted in the spot for so long.

“Well, it looks like we really got our tit in the wringer this time,” Garwood said. He then looked at Rider and added, “Excuse the saying, Detective.”

Bosch’s pager sounded and he quickly pulled it off his belt, disengaged the beep and looked at the number. It was not his own number as he had hoped it would be. He recognized it as the home number of Lieutenant Grace Billets. She probably wanted to know what was going on. If Irving had been as circumspect with her as he had been with Bosch on the phone, then she knew next to nothing.

“Important?” Garwood asked.

“I’ll take care of it later. You want to talk in here or should we go out to the train?”

“Let me tell you what we have first. Then it’s your scene to do with what you want.”

Garwood reached into the pocket of his coat, took out a softpack of Marlboros and began opening it.

“I thought you asked me for a smoke,” Bosch said.

“I did. This is my emergency pack. I’m not supposed to open it.”

It made little sense to Bosch. He watched as Garwood lit a cigarette and then offered the pack to Bosch. Harry shook his head. He put his hands in his pockets to make sure he wouldn’t take one.

“This going to bother you?” Garwood asked, holding up the cigarette, a taunting smile on his face.

“Not me, Cap. My lungs are probably already shot. But these guys . . .”

Rider and Edgar waved it off. They appeared as impatient as Bosch did in getting to the story.

“Okay, then,” Garwood finally said. “This is what we know. Last run of the night. Man named Elwood . . . Elwood . . . hold on a sec.”

He pulled a small pad from the same pocket he had replaced the cigarette package in and looked at some writing on the top page.

“Eldrige, yeah, Eldrige. Eldrige Peete. He was running the thing by himself—it only takes one person to run the whole operation—it’s all computer. He was about to close her down for the night. On Friday nights the last ride is at eleven. It was eleven. Before sending the top car down for the last ride he goes out, gets on it, closes and locks the door. Then he comes back in here, puts the command on the computer and sends it down.”

He referred to the pad again.

“These things have names. The one he sent down is called Sinai and the one he brought up was Olivet. He says they’re named after mountains in the Bible. It looked to him when Olivet got up here that the car was empty. So he goes out to lock it up—’cause then he has to send them one more time and the computer stops them side by side in the middle of the track for overnight. Then he’s done and out of here.”

Bosch looked at Rider and made a signal as if writing on his palm. She nodded and took her own pad and a pen out of the bulky purse she carried. She started taking notes.

“Only Elwood, I mean, Eldrige, he comes out to lock up the car and he finds the two bodies onboard. He backs away, comes in here and calls the police. With me?”

“So far. What next?”

Bosch was already thinking of the questions he would have to ask Garwood and then probably Peete.

“So we’re covering for Central dicks and the call eventually comes to me. I send out four guys and they set up the scene.”

“They didn’t check the bodies for ID?”

“Not right away. But there was no ID anyway. They were going by the book. They talked to this Eldrige Peete and they went down the steps and did a search for casings and other than that held tight until the coroner’s people arrived and did their thing. Guy’s wallet and watch are missing. His briefcase, too, if he was carrying one. But they got an ID off a letter the stiff had in his pocket. Addressed to Howard Elias. Once they found that, my guys took a real good look at the stiff and could tell it was Elias. They then, of course, called me and I called Irving and he called the chief and then it was decided to call you.”

He had said the last part as if he had been part of the decision process. Bosch glanced out the window. There was still a large number of detectives milling about.

“I’d say those first guys made more than just a call to you, Captain,” Bosch said.

Garwood turned to look out the window as if it had never occurred to him that it was unusual to see as many as fifteen detectives at a murder scene.

“I suppose,” he said.

“Okay, what else?” Bosch said. “What else did they do before they figured out who it was and that they weren’t long for the case?”

“Well, like I said, they talked to this fellow Eldrige Peete and they searched the areas outside the cars. Top and bottom. They —”

“Did they find any of the brass?”

“No. Our shooter was careful. He picked up all the casings. We do know that he was using a nine, though.”

“How?”

“The second victim, the woman. The shot was through and through. The slug hit a steel window bracket behind her, flattened and fell on the floor. It’s too mashed for comparison but you can still tell it was a nine. Hoffman said if he was guessing he’d say it was a Federal. You’ll have to hope for better lead from the autopsies as far as ballistics go. If you ever get that far.”

Perfect, Bosch thought. Nine was a cop’s caliber. And stopping to pick up the shells, that was a smooth move. You didn’t usually see that.

“The way they see it,” Garwood continued, “Elias got it just after he stepped onto the train down there. The guy comes up and shoots him in the ass first.”

“The ass?” Edgar said.

“That’s right. The first shot is in the ass. See, Elias is just stepping on so he’s a couple steps up from the sidewalk level. The shooter comes up from behind and holds the gun out—it’s at ass level. He sticks the muzzle in there and fires off the first cap.”

“Then what?” Bosch asked.

“Well, we think Elias goes down and sort of turns to see who it is. He raises his hands but the shooter fires again. The slug goes through one of his hands and hits him in the face, right between the eyes. That’s probably your cause-of-death shot right there. Elias drops back down. He’s facedown now. The shooter steps into the car and puts one more in the back of his head, point-blank. He then looks up and sees the woman, maybe for the first time. He hits her from about twelve feet. One in the chest, through and through, and she’s gone. No witness. The shooter gets the wallet and watch off Elias, picks up his shells and is gone. A few minutes later Peete brings the car up and finds the bodies. You now know what I know.”

Bosch and his partners were quiet a long moment. The scenario Garwood had woven didn’t sit right with Bosch but he didn’t know enough about the crime scene yet to challenge him on it.

“The robbery look legit?” Bosch finally asked.

“It did to me. I know the people down south aren’t going to want to hear that but there it is.”

Rider and Edgar were silent stones.

“What about the woman?” Bosch asked. “Was she robbed?”

“Doesn’t look like it. I kind of think the shooter didn’t want to come onto the train. Anyway, the lawyer was the one in the thousand-dollar suit. He’d be the target.”

“What about Peete? Did he hear the shots, a scream, anything?”

“He says no. He says the generator for the electric is right below the floor here. Sounds like an elevator running all day long so he wears earplugs. He never heard anything.”

Bosch stepped around the cable wheels and looked at the train operator’s station. For the first time he saw that mounted above the cash register was a small video display box with a split screen showing four camera views of Angels Flight—from a camera in each of the train cars and from above each terminus. On one corner of the screen he could see a long shot of the inside of Olivet. The crime scene techs were still working with the bodies.

Garwood came around the other side of the cable wheels.

“No luck there,” he said. “The cameras are live only, no tape. They are so the operator can check to make sure everyone is aboard and seated before starting the train.”

“Did he —”

“He didn’t look,” Garwood said, knowing Bosch’s questions. “He just checked through the window, thought the car was empty and brought it up so he could lock it up.”

“Where is he?”

“At Parker. Our offices. I guess you’ll have to come over and talk to him for yourself. I’ll keep somebody with him until you make it by.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“Not a one. Eleven o’clock at night down here, the place is pretty dead. The Grand Central Market closes up at seven. There’s nothing else down there except some office buildings. A couple of my guys were getting ready to go into those apartments next door here to knock on doors. But then they got the ID and sort of backed away.”

Bosch paced around in a small area of the room and thought. Very little had been done so far and the discovery of the murders was already four hours old. This bothered him even though he understood the reason behind the delay.

“Why was Elias on Angels Flight?” he asked Garwood. “They figure that out before backing away?”

“Well, he must’ve wanted to go up the hill, don’t you think?”

“Come on, Captain, if you know, why not save us the time?”

“We don’t know, Harry. We ran a DMV check, he lives out in Baldwin Hills. That’s a long way from Bunker Hill. I don’t know why he was coming up here.”

“What about where he was coming from?”

“That’s a little easier. Elias’s office is just over on Third. In the Bradbury Building. He was probably coming from there. But where he was going . . .”

“Okay, then what about the woman?”

“She’s a blank. My guys hadn’t even started with her when we were told to pull back.”

Garwood dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it with his heel. Bosch took it as a signal that the briefing was about over. He decided to see if he could get a rise out of him.

“You pissed off, Captain?”

“About what?”

“About being pulled off. About your people being on the suspect list.”

A small smile played on Garwood’s thin lips.

“No, I’m not angry. I see the chief’s point.”

“Are your people going to cooperate with us on this?”

After some hesitation Garwood nodded.

“Of course. The quicker they cooperate, the quicker you will clear them.”

“And you’ll tell them that?”

“That’s exactly what I’ll tell them.”

“We appreciate that, Captain. Tell me, which one of your people do you think could have done this?”

The lips curled into a full smile now. Bosch studied Garwood’s cigarette-yellowed teeth and for a moment was glad he was trying to quit.

“You’re a clever guy, Harry. I remember that.”

He said nothing else.

“Thanks, Captain. But do you have an answer to the question?”

Garwood moved to the door and opened it. Before leaving he turned and looked back at them, his eyes traveling from Edgar to Rider to Bosch.

“It wasn’t one of mine, Detectives. I guarantee it. You’ll be wasting your time if you look there too long.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Bosch said.

Garwood stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“Jeez,” Rider said. “It’s like Captain Boris Karloff or something. Does that guy only come out at night?”

Bosch smiled and nodded.

“Mr. Personality,” he said. “So, what do you think so far?”

“I think we’re at ground zero,” Rider said. “Those guys didn’t do jack before getting the hook.”

“Yeah, well, Robbery-Homicide, what do you want?” Edgar said. “They aren’t known for tap dancing. They back the tortoise over the hare any day of the week. But if you ask me, we’re fucked. You and me, Kiz, we can’t win on this one. Blue race, my ass.”

Bosch stepped toward the door.

“Let’s go out and take a look,” he said, cutting off discussion of Edgar’s concerns. He knew they were valid but for the moment they only served to clutter their mission. “Maybe we’ll get a few ideas before Irving wants to talk again.”

5

The number of detectives outside the station had finally begun to decrease. Bosch watched as Garwood and a group of his men crossed the plaza toward their cars. He then saw Irving standing to the side of the train car talking to Chastain and three detectives. Bosch didn’t know them but assumed they were IAD. The deputy chief was animated in his discussion but kept his voice so low that Bosch couldn’t hear what he was saying. Bosch wasn’t sure exactly what the IAD presence was all about, but he was getting an increasingly bad feeling about it.

He saw Frankie Sheehan hanging back behind Garwood and his group. He was about to leave but was hesitating. Bosch nodded at him.

“I see what you mean now, Frankie,” he said.

“Yeah, Harry, some days you eat the bear . . .”

“Right. You taking off?”

“Yeah, the cap told us all to get out of here.”

Bosch stepped over and kept his voice low.

“Any ideas I could borrow?”

Sheehan looked at the train car as if considering for the first time who might have killed the two people inside it.

“None other than the obvious and I think that will be a waste of time. But then again, you have to waste it, right? Cover all the bases.”

“Yeah. Anybody you think I should start with?”

“Yeah, me.” He smiled broadly. “I hated the douche bag. Know what I’m gonna do? I’m going now to try and find an all-night liquor store and buy the best Irish whiskey they got. I’m going to have a little celebration, Hieronymus. Because Howard Elias was a motherfucker.”

Bosch nodded. With cops the word
motherfucker
was rarely used. It was heard a lot by them but not used. With most cops it was reserved as being the worst thing you could say about someone. When it was said it meant one thing: that the person had crossed the righteous, that the person had no respect for the keepers of the law and therefore the rules and bounds of society. Cop killers were always motherfuckers, no questions asked. Defense lawyers got the call, most of the time. And Howard Elias was on the motherfucker list, too. Right at the top.

Sheehan gave a little salute and headed off across the plaza. Bosch turned his attention toward the interior of the train while he put on rubber gloves. The lights were back on and the techs were finished with the laser. Bosch knew one of them, Hoffman. He was working with a trainee Bosch had heard about but not met. She was an attractive Asian woman with a large bust. He had overheard other detectives in the squad room discussing her attributes and questioning their authenticity.

“Gary, is it cool to come in?” Bosch asked, leaning in through the door.

Hoffman looked up from the tackle box in which he kept his tools. He was organizing things and was about to close it.

“It’s cool. We’re wrapping up. This one yours, Harry?”

“It is now. Got anything good for me? Gonna make my day?”

Bosch stepped into the car, followed by Edgar and Rider. Since the car was on an incline, the floor was actually a series of steps down to the other door. The seats also were on graduated levels on either side of the center aisle. Bosch looked at the slatted bench seats and suddenly remembered how hard they had been on his skinny behind as a boy.

“’Fraid not,” Hoffman said. “It’s pretty clean.”

Bosch nodded and moved down a few more steps to the first body. He studied Catalina Perez the way someone might study a sculpture in a museum. There was no feeling for the object in front of him as human. He was studying details, gaining impressions. His eyes fell to the bloodstain and the small tear the bullet had made in the T-shirt. The bullet had hit the woman dead center. Bosch thought about this and envisioned the gunman in the doorway of the train twelve feet away.

“Hell of a shot, huh?”

It was the tech Bosch didn’t know. He looked at her and nodded. He had been thinking the same thing, that the shooter was someone with some expertise in firearms.

“Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sally Tam.”

She put out her hand and Bosch shook it. It felt weird. They were both wearing rubber gloves. He told her his name.

“Oh,” she said. “Somebody was just talking about you. About the hard-boiled eggs case.”

“It was just luck.”

Bosch knew he was getting a longer ride out of that case than he deserved. It was all because a
Times
reporter had heard about it and written a story that exaggerated Bosch’s skills to the point where he seemed like a distant relative of Sherlock Holmes.

Bosch pointed past Tam and said he needed to get by to take a look at the other body. She stepped to the side and leaned back and he slid by, careful not to allow himself to rub against her. He heard her introducing herself to Rider and Edgar. He dropped into a crouch so he could study the body of Howard Elias.

“Is this still as is?” he asked Hoffman, who was squatting next to his tackle box near the feet of the dead man.

“Pretty much. We turned him to get into his pockets but then put him back. There are some Polaroids over on that seat behind you if you want to double-check. Coroner’s people took those before anybody touched him.”

Bosch turned and saw the photos. Hoffman was right. The body was in the same position in which it had been found.

He turned back to the body and used both hands to turn the head so that he could study the wounds. Garwood’s interpretation had been correct, Bosch decided. The entry wound at the back of the head was a contact wound. Though partially obscured by blood that had matted the hair, there were still powder burns and stippling visible in a circular pattern around the wound. The face shot, however, was clean. This did not refer to the blood—there was a good amount of that. But there were no powder burns on the skin. The bullet to the face had come from a distance.

Bosch picked up the arm and turned the hand so he could study the entry wound in the palm. The arm moved easily. Rigor mortis had not yet begun—the cool evening air was delaying this process. There was no discharge burn on the palm. Bosch did some computing. No powder burns on the palm meant the firearm was at least three to four feet away from the hand when the bullet was discharged. If Elias had his arm extended with his palm out, then that added another three feet.

Edgar and Rider had made their way to the second body. Bosch could feel their presence behind him.

“Six to seven feet away, through the hand and still right between the eyes,” he said. “This guy can shoot. Better remember that when we take him down.”

Neither of them answered. Bosch hoped they picked up on the confidence in his last line as well as the warning. He was about to place the dead man’s hand down on the floor when he noticed the long scratch mark on the wrist and running along the side of the palm. He guessed the wound had occurred when Elias’s watch had been pulled off. He studied the wound closely. There was no blood in the track. It was a clean white laceration along the surface of the dark skin, yet it seemed deep enough to have drawn blood.

He thought about this for a moment. There were no shots to the heart, only to the head. The blood displacement from the wounds indicated the heart had continued to pump for at least several seconds after Elias had gone down. It would seem that the shooter would have yanked the watch off Elias’s wrist very quickly after the shooting—there was obviously no reason to hang around. Yet the scratch on the hand had not bled. It was as if it had occurred well after the heart had stopped pumping.

“What do you think about the lead enema?” Hoffman asked, interrupting Bosch’s thoughts.

As Hoffman got out of the way, Bosch stood and gingerly stepped around the body until he was down by the feet. He crouched again and looked at the third bullet wound. Blood had soaked the seat of the pants. Still, he could see the tear and tight burn pattern where the bullet went through the cloth and into Howard Elias’s anus. The weapon had been pressed in deep at the point where the seams of the pants were joined and then fired. It was a vindictive shot. More than a coup de grâce, it showed anger and hatred. It contradicted the cool skill of the other shots. It also told Bosch that Garwood had been wrong about the shooting sequence. Whether the captain had been intentionally wrong, he didn’t know.

He stood up and backed to the rear door of the car so that he was in the spot where the shooter had probably stood. He surveyed the carnage in front of him once more and nodded to no one in particular, just trying to commit it all to memory. Edgar and Rider were still between the bodies and making their own observations.

Bosch turned around and looked down the tracks to the turnstile station below. The detectives he had seen before were gone. Now a lone cruiser sat down there and two patrol officers guarded the lower crime scene.

Bosch had seen enough. He made his way past the bodies and carefully around Sally Tam again and up onto the platform. His partners followed, Edgar moving by Tam more closely than he had to.

Bosch stepped away from the train car so they could huddle together privately.

“What do you think?” he said.

“I think they’re real,” Edgar said, looking back toward Tam. “They’ve got that natural slope to them. What do you think, Kiz?”

“Funny,” Rider said, not taking the bait. “Can we talk about the case, please?”

Bosch admired how Rider took Edgar’s frequent comments and sexual innuendo without more than a sarcastic remark or complaint fired back at him. Such comments could get Edgar in serious trouble but only if Rider made a formal complaint. The fact that she didn’t indicated either she was intimidated or she could handle it. She also knew that if she went formal, she’d get what cops called a “K-9 jacket,” a reference to the city jail ward where snitches were housed. Bosch had once asked her in a private moment if she wanted him to talk to Edgar. As her supervisor he was legally responsible for resolving the problem but he knew that if he talked to Edgar, then Edgar would know he had gotten to her. Rider knew this as well. She had thought about all of this for a few moments and told Bosch to let things alone. She said she wasn’t intimidated, just annoyed on occasion. She could handle it.

“You go first, Kiz,” Bosch said, also ignoring Edgar’s comment, even though he privately disagreed with his conclusion about Tam. “Anything catch your eye in there?”

“Same as everybody else, I guess. Looks like the victims were not together. The woman either got on ahead of Elias or was about to get off. I think it’s pretty clear Elias was the primary target and she was just an also-ran. The shot up the ass tells me that. Also, like you said in there, this guy was a hell of a shot. We’re looking for someone who’s spent some time at the range.”

Bosch nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Nope. It’s a pretty clean scene. Nothing much to work with.”

“Jerry?”

“Nada. What about you?”

“Same. But I think Garwood was telling us a story. His sequence was for shit.”

“How?” Rider said.

“The shot up the pipe was the last one, not the first. Elias was already down. It’s a contact wound and the entry is in the underside, where all the seams of the pants come together. It would be hard to get a muzzle up there if Elias was standing—even if he was up a step from the shooter. I think he was already down when the shooter popped that cap.”

“That changes things,” Rider said. “Makes the last one a ‘fuck you’ shot. The shooter was angry at Elias.”

“So he knew him,” Edgar said.

Bosch nodded.

“And you think Garwood knew this and was just trying to steer us wrong by planting the suggestion?” Rider asked. “Or do you think he just missed it?”

“What I know about Garwood is that he is not a stupid man,” Bosch said. “He and fifteen of his men were about to be pulled into federal court on Monday by Elias and dragged right through the shit. He knows any one of those boys might possibly be capable of this. He was protecting them. That’s what I think.”

“Well, that’s bullshit. Protecting a killer cop? He should be —”

“
Maybe
protecting a killer cop. We don’t know. He didn’t know. I think it was probably a just-in-case move.”

“Doesn’t matter. If that’s what he was doing, he shouldn’t have a badge.”

Bosch didn’t say anything to that and Rider wasn’t placated. She shook her head in disgust. Like most cops in the department, she was tired of fuck-ups and cover-ups, of the few tainting the many.

“What about the scratch on the hand?”

Edgar and Rider looked at him with arched eyebrows.

“What about it?” Edgar said. “Prob’ly happened when the shooter pulled off the watch. One of those with the expanding band. Like a Rolex. Knowing Elias, it was prob’ly a Rolex. Makes a nice motive.”

“Yeah, if it was a Rolex,” Bosch said.

He turned and looked out across the city. He doubted Elias wore a Rolex. For all of his flamboyance, Elias was the kind of lawyer who also knew the nuances of his profession. He knew that a lawyer wearing a Rolex might turn jurors off. He wouldn’t wear one. He would have a nice and expensive watch, but not one that advertised itself like a Rolex.

“What, Harry?” Rider said. “What about the scratch?”