The Drop (27 page)

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because he told me he was going to.”

Bosch was ready for just about anything he thought McQuillen could parry with. But he wasn’t ready for that.

“He told you that.”

“That’s right.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“Sunday night. In his room. That’s what he was there for. He said he was going to jump. I got out of there before he did.”

Bosch paused again, mindful that McQuillen had had several days to prepare for this moment. He could have concocted an elaborate story that would cover all the facts. But in the file in front of him Bosch still had the photograph of the wound on George Irving’s shoulder blade. It was a game changer. McQuillen wouldn’t be able to explain it away.

“Why don’t you tell me your story and how you came to have this conversation with George Irving. And don’t leave anything out. I want the details.”

McQuillen took in a big breath and then slowly exhaled.

“You realize the risk I’m taking here? Talking to you? I don’t know what you have or think you have. I could tell you the God’s honest truth and you could twist it and use it to fuck me over. And I don’t even have a lawyer in the room.”

“It’s your call, Mark. You want to talk, then talk. You want a lawyer, we get you a lawyer and all talk ends. Everything ends and we play it that way. You were a cop and you’re smart enough to know how this really works. You know there’s only one way for you to get out of here and get home tonight. You gotta talk your way out.”

Bosch made a gesture with his hand, as though he was passing the choice to him. McQuillen nodded. He knew it was now or never. A lawyer would tell him to sit tight and keep quiet, let the police put up or shut up in the courtroom. Never give them something they don’t already have. And it was good advice but not always. Some things have to be said.

“I was in that room with him,” he said. “Sunday night. Actually, Monday morning. I went up there to see him. I was angry. I wanted . . . I’m not sure what I wanted. I didn’t want to lose my life again and I wanted to . . . scare him, I guess. Confront him. But—”

He pointed emphatically at Bosch.

“—he was alive when I left that room.”

Bosch realized that he now had enough on tape to arrest McQuillen and hold him on a murder charge. He had just admitted to being with the victim in the place from which Irving had been dropped. But Bosch showed no excitement. There was more to get here.

“Let’s go back,” he said. “Tell me how you knew George Irving was even in the hotel and where.”

McQuillen shrugged like the question was for a dummy.

“You know that,” he said. “Hooch Rollins told me. He dropped a fare there Sunday night and happened to see Irving going in. He told me because he’d heard me going on once in the break room about the Irvings. I held a staff meeting after the DUIs and told everybody, ‘This is what they’re doing and this is the guy behind it.’ Got his photo off Google, the little shit.”

“So Rollins told you he was going into the hotel. How’d you know he had a room and how’d you know which room it was?”

“I called the hotel. I knew they wouldn’t tell me his room for security reasons and I couldn’t ask to be transferred to the room. What was I going to say, ‘Dude, do you mind giving me your room number?’ No, so I called up and asked for the garage. Hooch had told me he saw him valeting his car, so I called the garage and said I was Irving and wanted them to check and see if I left my phone in the car. I said, You know my room number? Can you bring it up if you find it? And the guy said yes, you’re in seventy-nine and if I find the phone I’ll send it up. So there, I had his room.”

Bosch nodded. It was a clever plan. But it also showed some of the elements of premeditation. McQuillen was talking himself into a first-degree murder charge. All Bosch seemingly had to do was direct him with general questions and McQuillen provided the rest. It was a downhill path.

“I waited until the end of shift at midnight and went over there,” McQuillen said. “I didn’t want to be seen by anybody or any cameras. So I went around the hotel and found a fire escape ladder that was on the side. It went all the way up to the roof. But on each landing there was a balcony and I could climb off and take a break if I needed it.”

“Were you wearing gloves?”

“Yeah, gloves and coveralls I keep in the trunk. In my business you never know whether you’ll be crawling under a car or something. I thought if somebody saw me, I’d look like a maintenance guy.”

“You keep that stuff in the trunk? You’re a dispatcher.”

“I’m a partner, man. My name isn’t on the franchise with the city because I didn’t think we’d get the franchise way back when if they knew I was part of it. But I’ve got a third of the company.”

Which helped explain why McQuillen would go to such lengths with Irving. Another potential pothole in the case filled in by the suspect himself.

“So you took the fire escape to the seventh floor. What time was this?”

“I went off shift at midnight. So it was like twelve thirty or thereabouts.”

“What happened when you got to the seventh floor?”

“I got lucky. On the seventh floor, there wasn’t an exit. No door to the hallway. Just two glass doors on the balcony to two different rooms. One to the left and one to the right. I looked in the one on the right and there he was. Irving was sitting right there on the couch.”

McQuillen stopped. It looked as if he was staring at the memory of that night, at what he had seen through the balcony door. Bosch was mindful of needing to keep the story going but with as little from himself as possible.

“So you found him.”

“Yeah, he was just sitting there, drinking Jack Black straight outta the bottle and looking like he was just waiting for something.”

“Then what happened?”

“He took the last pull out of that bottle and all of a sudden he got up and he started coming right at me. Like he knew I was on the balcony watching him.”

“What did you do?”

“I backed up against the wall next to the door. I figured he couldn’t have seen me with the reflection inside on the glass. He was just coming out on the balcony. So I backed up next to the door and he opened it and stepped out. He walked right to the wall and he threw the empty bottle out there as far as he could. Then he leaned over the wall and started looking down, like he was going to puke or something. And I knew when he finished his business and turned around I was going to be standing right in front of him. There was no place to go.”

“Did he vomit?”

“No, he never did. He just—”

A loud and unexpected knock on the door nearly made Bosch jump off his seat.

“Just hold the story right there,” he said.

He got up and used his body to shield the knob from McQuillen. He punched in the combination on the lock and opened the door. Chu was standing there and Bosch almost reached out to strangle him. But he calmly stepped out and closed the door.

“What the fuck are you doing? You know you never barge in on an interview. What are you, a rookie?”

“Look, I wanted to tell you, I killed the story. She’s not running it.”

“That’s great. You could’ve told me after the interview was over. This guy’s about to give up the whole thing and you knock on the fucking door.”

“I just didn’t know if you were making moves with him because you thought the story was going to come out. It won’t now, Harry.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

Bosch turned back to the interview room door.

“I’m going to make it up to you, Harry. I promise.”

Bosch turned back to him.

“I don’t care about your promises. You want to do something, stop knocking on the door and start working on a search warrant for this guy’s watch. When we send it to forensics I want it on a judge’s order.”

“You got it, Harry.”

“Good. Go away.”

Bosch punched in the combination, reentered the room and sat across from McQuillen.

“Something important?” McQuillen asked.

“No, just some bullshit. Why don’t you keep telling the story? You said Irving was on the balcony and—”

“Yeah, I was standing there behind him against the wall. As soon as he turned to go back in I was going to be like a sitting duck.”

“So what did you do?”

“I don’t know. Instinct took over. I made a move. I came up behind him and grabbed him. I started dragging him back into the room. All those houses on the hillside. I thought somebody might see us out there. I just wanted to get him back into the room.”

“You say you grabbed him. How exactly did you grab him?”

“Around the neck. I used the choke hold. Like old times.”

McQuillen looked directly at Bosch as he said it, as if passing on some sort of significance.

“Did he struggle? Did he put up any resistance?”

“Yeah, he was shocked as shit. He started fighting but he was sort of drunk. I backed him in through the door. He flopped around like a fucking marlin but it didn’t take long. It never did. He went to sleep.”

Bosch waited to see if he would continue but that was it.

“He was unconscious then,” he said.

“That’s right,” McQuillen said.

“What happened next?”

“He started breathing again pretty quick but he was asleep. I told you, he drank that whole bottle of Jack. He was snoring. I had to shake him and wake him up. He finally came to and he was drunk and confused and when he saw me he didn’t know me from Adam. I had to tell him who I was and why I was there. He was on the floor, sort of propped up on his elbow. And I was standing over him like God.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him he was fucking with the wrong guy and that I wasn’t going to let him do what his father had done to me. And that’s when things sort of went screwy because I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

“Wait a minute, I’m not tracking that. What do you mean by ‘things going screwy’?”

“He started laughing at me. I had just jumped the fucker and choked him out and he thinks it’s funny. I’m trying to scare the shit out of him and he’s too drunk. He’s on the floor laughing his ass off.”

Bosch thought about this a long moment. He didn’t like the way this was going because it was not in any direction he could have expected.

“Is that all he did, laugh? He didn’t say anything?”

“Yeah, eventually he got over laughing and that’s when he told me I didn’t have anything to worry about anymore.”

“What else?”

“That’s pretty much it. He said I had nothing to worry about and that I could go on home. He waved me off, like good-bye now.”

“Did you ask him how he was sure there was nothing to worry about?”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I just sort of got it. He was there to off himself. When he went out on the balcony looking over the wall, he was picking his spot. His plan was to jump and he was drinking the Jack to give him the courage to do it. So I left and that’s . . . that’s what he did.”

Bosch said nothing at first. McQuillen’s story was either an elaborate cover story or just strange enough to be true. There were elements of it that could be checked. The results of the blood-alcohol test were not in yet, but the mention of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s was new. There had been no sign of it on the video of Irving checking in. No witness had reported seeing him taking a bottle to his room.

“Tell me about the bottle of Jack,” he said.

“I told you, he drank it and then chucked it.”

“How big was it? Are you talking about a whole fifth?”

“No, no, smaller. It was a six-shooter.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s like a smaller flask bottle they put out. Holds a good six shots. I drink Jack myself and I recognized the bottle. We call ’em six-shooters.”

Bosch was thinking that six good-sized shots probably added up to ten or twelve ounces. It was possible Irving could have concealed a flask-shaped bottle that size while he was checking in. Harry also remembered the array of bottles and snacks lined up on the kitchenette counter in the hotel suite. It could have come from there as well.

“Okay, when he threw the bottle, what happened?”

“I heard it shatter out there in the darkness. I think it hit the street or somebody’s roof or something.”

“Which direction did he throw it?”

“Straight out.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, sit tight, McQuillen. I’ll be back.”

Bosch got up, punched in the combo again and left the room. He started down the hall toward Open-Unsolved.

As he passed the video room, the door came open and Kiz Rider stepped out. She had been watching the interview. Bosch wasn’t surprised. She knew he was bringing McQuillen in.

“Holy shit, Harry.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, do you believe him?”

Bosch stopped and looked at her.

“The story hangs together and it’s got parts we can check. When he went into the interview room he had no idea what we had—the button on the floor, the wounds on the shoulder, the witness who put him on the fire escape three hours too early—and his story hit every marker.”

Rider put her hands on her hips.

“And at the same time, he puts himself in that room. He admits choking the vic out.”

“It was a risky move, putting himself in the dead guy’s room.”

“So you believe him?”

“I don’t know. There’s something else. McQuillen was a cop. He knows—”

Bosch stopped cold and snapped his fingers.

“What?”

“He’s covered by an alibi. That’s what he hasn’t said. Irving didn’t go down for another three or four hours. McQuillen’s got an alibi and he’s waiting to see if we jack him up. Because if we do, he can ride it out, then drop the alibi and walk. It would embarrass the department, maybe give him a little payback for all that happened to him.”

Bosch nodded. That had to be it.

“Look, Harry, we’ve already primed the pump. Irvin Irving’s expecting the announcement of an arrest. You said the
Times
already has it.”

“Fuck Irving. I don’t care what he’s expecting. And my partner claims we don’t have to worry about the
Times
.”