Angels Flight

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch left his briefcase on the tiled entryway floor and headed the way she had directed. The furniture in the girl’s room was not covered. The white sheets that had covered everything were in piles on the floor. It looked like someone — probably the dead girl’s mother — had visited here on occasion. The bed was unmade. The pink bedspread and matching sheets were twisted into a knot — not as if by someone sleeping, but maybe by someone who had lain on the bed and gathered the bedclothes to her chest. It made Bosch feel bad seeing it that way.

  Bosch stepped to the middle of the room, keeping his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. He studied the girl’s things. There were stuffed animals and dolls, a shelf of picture books. No movie posters, no photos of young television stars or pop singers. It was almost as if the room belonged to a girl much younger than Stacey Kincaid had been at the end. Bosch wondered if the design was her parents’ or her own, as if maybe she had thought by holding on to the things of her past she could somehow avoid the horror of the present. The thought made him feel worse than when he had studied the bedclothes.

  He noticed a hairbrush on the bureau and saw strands of blond hair caught in it. It made him feel a little easier. He knew that the hair from the brush could be used, if it ever came to the point of connecting evidence — possibly from the trunk of a car — to the dead girl.

  He stepped over and looked at the window. It was a slider and he saw the black smudges of fingerprint powder still on the frame. He unlocked the window and pulled it open. There were splinter marks where the latch had supposedly been jimmied with a screwdriver or similar tool.

  Bosch looked out through the rain at the backyard. There was a lima bean-shaped pool that was covered with a plastic tarp. Rainwater was collecting on the tarp. Again Bosch thought of the girl. He wondered if she ever dove into the pool to escape and to swim to the bottom to scream.

  Past the pool he noticed the hedge that surrounded the back yard. It was ten feet high and insured backyard privacy. Bosch recognized the hedge from the computer images he had seen on the Charlotte’s Web Site.

  Bosch closed the window. Rain always made him sad. And this day he didn’t need it to feel that way. He already had the ghost of Frankie Sheehan in his head, he had a crumbled marriage he didn’t have time to think about, and he had haunting thoughts about the little girl with the lost-in-the-woods face.

  He took his hand from his pocket to open the closet door. The girl’s clothes were still there. Colorful dresses on white plastic hangers. He looked through them until he found the white dress with the little semaphore flags. He remembered that from the web site, too.

  He went back out into the hallway and checked the other rooms out. There was what looked like a guest bedroom, which Bosch recognized as the room from the photos on the web page. This was where Stacey Kincaid had been assaulted and filmed. Bosch didn’t stay long. Further down the hall were a bathroom, the master suite and another bedroom that had been converted into a library and office.

  He went back out to the living room. It did not look as though Kate Kincaid had moved. He picked up his briefcase and walked into the room to join her.

  ‘I’m a little damp, Mrs Kincaid. All right if I sit down?’

  ‘Of course. And it’s Kate.’

  ‘I was thinking that I’d rather keep things on a formal basis for the moment, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Suit yourself, Detective.’

  He was angry at her, angry at what had happened in this house and how the secret had been locked away. He had seen enough during his tour of the place to confirm in his own mind what Kizmin Rider had fervently believed the night before.

  He sat down on one of the covered chairs across from the couch and put his briefcase on his knees. He opened it and started going through some of the contents, which from her angle Kate Kincaid could not see.

  ‘Did you find something of interest in Stacey’s bedroom?’

  Bosch stopped what he was doing and looked over the top of the briefcase at her for a moment.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I was just getting a feel for the place. I assume it was thoroughly searched before and there isn’t anything in there that I could find. Did Stacey like the pool?’

  He went back to his work inside the briefcase while she told him what a fine swimmer her daughter had been. Bosch really wasn’t doing anything. He was just following an act he had rehearsed in his head all morning.

  ‘She could go up and back without having to come up for air,’ Kate Kincaid said.

  Bosch closed the case and looked at her. She was smiling at the memory of her daughter. Bosch smiled but without any warmth.

  ‘Mrs Kincaid, how do you spell innocence?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The word. Innocence. How do you spell it?’

  ‘Is this about Stacey? I don’t understand. Why are you — ’

  ‘Indulge me for a moment. Please. Spell the word.’

  ‘I’m not a good speller. With Stacey I always kept a dictionary in my purse in case she asked about a word. You know, one of those little ones that — ’

  ‘Go ahead. Try it.’

  She paused to think. The confusion was evident on her face.

  ‘I-double n, I know there’s two. I-double n-o-c-e-n-s-e.’

  She looked at him and raised her eyebrows in a question. Bosch shook his head and reopened the briefcase.

  ‘Almost,’ he said. ‘But there’s two c’s, no s.’

  ‘Darn. I told you.’

  She smiled at him. He took something out of the briefcase, closed it and put it down on the floor. He got up and walked across to the couch. He handed her a plastic document envelope. Inside it was one of the anonymous letters that had been sent to Howard Elias.

  ‘Take a look,’ he said. ‘You spelled it wrong there, too.’

  She stared at the letter for a long time and then took a deep breath. She spoke without looking up at Bosch.

  ‘I guess I should have used my little dictionary. But I was in a hurry when I wrote this.’

  Bosch felt a lifting inside. He knew then that there would be no fight, no difficulty. This woman had been waiting for this moment. Maybe she knew it was coming. Maybe that was why she had said she felt better than she had in a long, long time.

  ‘I understand,’ Bosch said. ‘Would you like to talk to me about this, Mrs Kincaid? About everything?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I would.’

  Bosch put a fresh battery into the tape recorder, then turned it on and put it down on the coffee table, the microphone pointed up so that it would capture his voice as well as Kate Kincaid’s.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He then identified himself and said who she was, noted the date, time and location of the interview. He read off a constitutional rights advisement from a printed form he had taken from his briefcase.

  ‘Do you understand these rights as I have just read them?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Do you wish to talk with me, Mrs Kincaid, or do you wish to contact an attorney?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No what?’

  ‘No attorney. An attorney can’t help me. I want to talk.’

  This gave Bosch pause. He was thinking about how best to keep hair off the cake.

  ‘Well, I can’t give you legal advice. But when you say, “An attorney can’t help me,” I’m not sure that that is going to constitute a waiver. You see what I mean? Because it is always possible that an attorney could — ’

  ‘Detective Bosch, I don’t want an attorney. I fully understand my rights and I don’t want an attorney.’

  ‘Okay, then I need you to sign this paper at the bottom and then sigri again where it says that you do not request an attorney.’

  He put the rights form down on the coffee table and watched her sign it. He then took it back and made sure she had signed her own name. He then signed it himself as the witness and put it in one of the
slots of the accordion file in the briefcase. He sat back down in the chair and looked at her. He thought for a moment about talking to her about a spousal waiver but decided that could wait. He’d let the district attorney’s office handle that — when and if the time came.

  ‘Then I guess this is it,’ he said. ‘You want to start, Mrs Kincaid, or do you want me to ask you questions?’

  He was using her name frequently on purpose — in case the tape was ever played before a jury there would be no misunderstanding of whom the voices belonged to.

  ‘My husband killed my daughter. I guess that’s what you want to know first. That’s why you are here.’

  Bosch froze for a moment and then slowly nodded.

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘For a long time it was a suspicion ... then it became my belief based on things I had heard. Eventually, he actually told me. I finally confronted him and he admitted it.’

  ‘What exactly did he tell you?’

  ‘He said that it was an accident — but you don’t strangle people by accident. He said she threatened him, said that she was going to tell her friends what he ... what he and his friends did to her. He said he was trying to stop her, to talk her out of doing it. He said things got out of hand.’

  ‘This occurred where?’

  ‘Right here. In the house.’

  ‘When?’

  She gave the date of her daughter’s reported abduction. She seemed to understand that Bosch had to ask some questions that had obvious answers. He was building a record.

  ‘Your husband had sexually abused Stacey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He admitted this to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She started to cry then and opened her purse for a tissue. Bosch let her alone for a minute. He wondered if she was crying because of grief or guilt or out of relief that the story was finally being told. He thought it was probably a combination of all three.

  ‘Over how long a period was she abused?’ he finally asked.

  Kate Kincaid dropped the tissue to her lap.

  ‘I don’t know. We were married five years before ... before she died. I don’t know when it started.’

  ‘When did you become aware of it?’

  ‘I would rather not answer that question, if you don’t mind.’

  Bosch studied her. Her eyes were downcast. The question was at the foundation of her guilt.

  ‘It’s important, Mrs Kincaid.’

  ‘She came to me once.’ She got a fresh tissue from her purse for a fresh torrent of tears. ‘About a year before ... She said that he was doing things she didn’t think were right ... At first, I didn’t believe her. But I asked him about it anyway. He denied it, of course. And I believed him. I thought it was an adjustment problem. You know, to a stepfather. I thought maybe this was her way of acting out or something.’

  ‘And later?’

  She didn’t say anything. She looked down at her hands. She pulled her purse onto her lap and held it tightly.

  ‘Mrs Kincaid?’

  ‘And later there were things. Little things. She never wanted me to go out and leave her with him — but she’d never tell me why. Looking back, it is obvious why. It wasn’t so obvious then. One time he was taking a long time in her room saying good night. I went to see what was wrong and the door was locked.’

  ‘Did you knock on the door?’

  She sat frozen for a long moment before shaking her head no.

  ‘Is that a no?’

  Bosch had to ask it for the tape.

  ‘Yes, no. I did not knock.’

  Bosch decided to press on. He knew that mothers of incest and molestation victims often didn’t see the obvious or take the obvious steps to save their daughters from jeopardy. Now Kate Kincaid lived in a personal hell in which her decision to give up her husband—and herself — to public ridicule and criminal prosecution would always seem like too little too late. She had been right. A lawyer couldn’t help her now. No one could.

  ‘Mrs Kincaid, when did you become suspicious of your husband’s involvement in your daughter’s death?’

  ‘During Michael Harris’s trial. You see I believed he did it — Harris. I mean, I just didn’t believe that the police would plant fingerprints. Even the prosecutor assured me that it was unlikely that it could be done. So I believed in the case. I wanted to believe. But then during the trial one of the detectives, I think it was Frank Sheehan, was testifying and he said they arrested Michael Harris at the place where he worked.’

  ‘The car wash.’

  ‘Right. He gave the address and the name of the place. And it hit me then. I remembered going to that same car wash with Stacey. I remembered her books were in the car. I told my husband and said we should tell Jim Camp. He was the prosecutor. But Sam talked me out of it. He said the police were sure and he was sure that Michael Harris was the killer. He said if I raised the question the defense would find out and use the information to twist the case. Like with the O.J. case, the truth meant nothing. We’d lose the case. He reminded me that Stacey was found right near Harris’s apartment ... He said he probably saw her with me at the car wash that day and started to stalk us—stalk her. He convinced me ... and I let it go. I still wasn’t sure it wasn’t Harris. I did what my husband told me.’

  ‘And Harris got off.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bosch paused for a moment, believing the break was needed before the next question.

  ‘What changed, Mrs Kincaid?’ he finally asked. ‘What made you send those notes to Howard Elias?’

  ‘My suspicions were never far away. Then one day, a few months ago, I overheard part of a conversation my husband was having with his ... his friend.’

  She said the last word as if it was the worst thing you could ever say about anybody.

  ‘Richter?’

  ‘Yes. They thought I wasn’t home and I wasn’t supposed to be. I was supposed to be at lunch with my girlfriends at the club. Mountaingate. Only I stopped going to lunches with my girlfriends after Stacey ... well, you know, lunches and that sort of thing didn’t interest me anymore. So I would tell my husband I was going to lunch but instead I’d go visit Stacey. At the cemetery ...’

  ‘Okay. I understand.’

  ‘No, I don’t think you could understand, Detective Bosch.’

  Bosch nodded.

  ‘I’m sorry. You’re probably right. Go on, Mrs Kincaid.’

  ‘It was raining on that particular day. Just like today, hard and sad. So I only visited with her for a few minutes. I got back to the house early. I guess they didn’t hear me come in because of the rain. But I heard them. They were in his office talking ... I’d had my suspicions so I went to the door. I didn’t make a sound. I stood outside the door and listened.’

  Bosch leaned forward. This was the payoff. He’d know in a moment how legitimate she was. He doubted two men involved in the killing of a twelve-year-old girl would sit around reminiscing about it. If Kate Kincaid said that was the case, then Bosch would have to think she was lying.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They weren’t talking in sentences. Do you understand? They were just making short comments. I could tell they were talking about girls. Different girls — it was disgusting what they said. I had no idea how organized this all was. I had deluded myself into thinking that if something had happened with Stacey it was a weakness on his part, something he struggled with. I was wrong. These men were organized predators.’

  ‘So you were at the door listening ... ,’ Bosch said by way of getting her back on track.

  ‘They weren’t talking to each other. It was like they were commenting. I could tell by how they spoke that they were looking at something. And I could hear the computer — the keyboard and other sounds. Later I would be able to use the computer and find what it was they were looking at. It was young girls, ten, eleven ...’

  ‘Okay, we’ll get back to the computer in a couple of minutes. But let’s go back
to what you heard. How did this ... these comments lead you to conclude or know something about Stacey?’

  ‘Because they mentioned her. I heard Richter say, “There she is.” And then my husband said her name. The way he said it ... almost with a longing—it wasn’t the way a father or a stepfather would have said it. And then they were quiet. I could tell, they were looking at her. I knew.’

  Bosch thought about what he had seen on Rider’s computer screen the night before. It was hard for him to imagine Kincaid and Richter sitting in an office together watching the same scenes — and with decidedly different responses to them.

  ‘And then Richter asked my husband if he’d heard from Detective Sheehan. My husband said, “About what?” and Richter said for the payoff for putting Harris’s prints on Stacey’s book. My husband laughed. He said there was no payoff. He then told Richter what I had told him during the trial, about my having been to that car wash. When he was done telling it, they both laughed and my husband said, and I remember this so clearly, he said, “I’ve been lucky like that all my life ...” And that’s when I knew. He did it. That they did it.’

  ‘And you decided to help Howard Elias.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why him? Why didn’t you go to the police?’

  ‘Because I knew they’d never charge him. The Kincaids are a powerful family. They believe they are above the law and they are. My husband’s father put money into the pockets of every politician in this town. Democrat, Republican, it didn’t matter. They all owed him. And besides, that didn’t matter. I called Jim Camp and asked him what would happen if they ever found somebody else besides Harris that they thought took Stacey. He told me they’d never be able to try him because of the first case. All the defense would have to do was point to the first trial and say that last year they thought it was somebody else. That was enough for reasonable doubt right there. So they’d never go ahead with a case.’

  Bosch nodded. He knew she was right. Going to trial against Harris put hair on the cake forever after.

  ‘This might be a good point to take a break for a couple minutes,’ he said. ‘I need to make a phone call.’