“The chief will lead it. But we want to have a show of force. We want the public to know we have top-notch investigators on this case.”
“You mean top-notch black investigators, don’t you?”
Bosch and Irving held hard stares for a moment.
“Your job, Detective, is to solve this case and solve it as quickly as you can. You are not to concern yourself with other matters.”
“Well, that’s kind of hard to do, Chief, when you are pulling my people out of the field. Can’t solve anything quickly if they’ve got to be here for every dog and pony show you people cook up.”
“That is enough, Detective.”
“They are top-notch investigators. And that’s what I want to use them for. Not as cannon fodder for the department’s race relations. They don’t want to be used that way, either. That in itself is ra —”
“Enough, I said! I do not have time to debate racism, institutional or otherwise, with you, Detective Bosch. We are talking about public perceptions. Suffice it to say that if we mishandle this case or its perceptions from the outside, this city could be burning again by midnight.”
Irving paused to look at his watch.
“I meet the police chief in twenty minutes. Could you please begin to enlighten me with the accomplishments of the investigation up to this point?”
Bosch reached over and opened his briefcase. Before he could reach for his notebook the phone on the cabinet rang. He got up and went to it.
“Remember,” Irving said, “I want them here by eleven.”
Bosch nodded and picked up the phone. It wasn’t Edgar or Rider and he had not expected that it would be.
“This is Cormier downstairs in the lobby. This Bosch?”
“Yeah.”
“You just got a message here. Guy wouldn’t give a name. He just said to tell you that what you need is in a trash can in the MetroLink station, First and Hill. It’s in a manila envelope. That’s it.”
“Okay, thanks.”
He hung up and looked at Irving.
“It was something else.”
Bosch sat back down and took his notebook out of his briefcase along with the clipboard with the crime scene reports, sketches and evidence receipts attached to it. He didn’t need any of it to summarize the case but he thought it might be reassuring to Irving to see the accumulation of paper the case was engendering.
“I’m waiting, Detective,” the deputy chief said by way of prompting him.
Bosch looked up from the paperwork.
“Where we are is pretty much point zero. We have a good idea what we have. We don’t have much of a handle on the who and why.”
“Then what have we got, Detective?”
“We’re going with Elias being the primary target in what looks like an outright assassination.”
Irving brought his head down so that his clasped hands hid his face.
“I know that’s not what you want to hear, Chief, but if you want the facts, that’s what the facts point to. We have —”
“The last thing Captain Garwood told me was that it looked like a robbery. The man was wearing a thousand-dollar suit, walking through downtown at eleven o’clock at night. His watch and wallet are missing. How can you discount the possibility of a robbery?”
Bosch leaned back and waited. He knew Irving was venting steam. The news Bosch was giving him was guaranteed to put ulcers on his ulcers once the media picked it up and ran.
“The watch and wallet have been located. They weren’t stolen.”
“Where?”
Bosch hesitated, though he had already anticipated the question. He hesitated because he was about to lie to a superior on the behalf of four men who did not deserve the benefit of the risk he was taking.
“In his desk drawer at the office. He must’ve forgotten them when he closed up and headed to his apartment. Or maybe he left them on purpose in case he got robbed.”
Bosch realized he would still need to come up with an explanation in his reports when the autopsy on Elias revealed the postmortem scratches on his wrist. He would have to write it off to having occurred while the body was being manipulated or moved by the investigators.
“Then perhaps it was an armed robber who shot Elias when he did not turn over a wallet,” Irving said, oblivious to Bosch’s internal discomfort. “Perhaps it was a robber who shot first and searched for valuables second.”
“The sequence and manner of the shots suggests otherwise. The sequence suggests a personal tie—rage transmitted from one person to Elias. Whoever did this knew Elias.”
Irving put his hands down on the table and leaned a few inches toward its center. He seemed impatient when he spoke.
“All I am saying is that you cannot completely eliminate these other possible scenarios.”
“That might be true but we’re not pursuing those scenarios. I believe it would be a waste of time and I don’t have the manpower.”
“I told you I wanted a thorough investigation. I want no stone unturned.”
“Well, we’ll get to those stones later. Look, Chief, if you are focusing on this so you can tell the media it might be a robbery, then fine, say it might be. I don’t care about what you tell the media. I’m just trying to tell you where we stand and where we’re going to be looking.”
“Fine. Proceed.”
He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
“We need to look at the man’s files and draw up lists of potential suspects. The cops who Elias really nailed in court or vilified in the media over the years. Or both. The grudges. And the cops he would have tried to nail beginning Monday.”
Irving showed no reaction at all. It seemed to Bosch he was already thinking about the next hour, when he and the police chief would go out on a cliff and address the media about such a dangerous case.
“We are being handicapped,” Bosch continued. “Carla Entrenkin has been appointed by the warrants judge as a special master to oversee the protection of Elias’s clients. She’s in his office right now and won’t let us in.”
“I thought you said you found the man’s wallet and watch in the office.”
“I did. That was before Carla showed up and kicked us out.”
“How did she get appointed?”
“She says the judge called her, thought she’d be perfect. She and a deputy from the DA are there. I’m hoping to get the first batch of files this afternoon.”
“Okay, what else?”
“There’s something you should know. Before Carla made us leave, we came across a couple things of interest. The first is some notes Elias kept at his desk. I read through them and there were indications that he had a source in here. Parker Center, I mean. A good source, somebody who apparently knew how to find and get access to old files—unsubstantiated IAD investigations. And there were indications of a dispute. The source either couldn’t or wouldn’t provide something Elias wanted on the Black Warrior thing.”
Irving went quiet for a second, staring at Bosch, processing. When he spoke again his voice was more distant still.
“Was this source identified?”
“Not in what I saw, which wasn’t a lot. It was coded.”
“What was it that Elias wanted? Could it be related to the killings?”
“I don’t know. If you want me to pursue it as a priority I will. I was thinking that other things would be the priority. The cops he dragged into court in the past, the ones he was going to pull in starting Monday. Also, there was a second thing we found in the office before we got kicked out.”
“What was that?”
“It actually branches into two more avenues of investigation.”
He quickly told Irving about the photo printout of Mistress Regina and the indication that Elias might have been involved in what Chastain had called rough trade. The deputy chief seemed to take a keen interest in this aspect of the investigation and asked Bosch what his plans were in regard to pursuing it.
“I’m planning on attemptin
g to locate and interview the woman, see if Elias ever actually had any contact with her. After that, we see where it goes.”
“And the other branch of investigation this leads to?”
“The family. Whether it was this Regina woman or not, it looks like Elias was a philanderer. There are enough indications in his downtown apartment to suggest this. So if the wife knew about all of this, then we have a motivation right there. Of course, I’m just talking. At the moment we have nothing that indicates she even knew, let alone arranged or carried out the kill. It also flies in the face of the psychological read on the killings.”
“Which is what?”
“It doesn’t look like the dispassionate work of a hired killer. There is a lot of rage in the killing method. It looks to me like the killer knew Elias and hated him—at least at the moment of the shooting. I would also say it looks like it was a man.”
“How so?”
“The shot up the ass. It was vindictive. Like a rape. Men rape, women don’t. So my gut instinct tells me this clears the widow. But my instincts have been wrong. It’s still something we have to follow up on. There’s the son, too. Like I told you before, he reacted pretty hot when we gave them the news. But we don’t really know what his relationship with his father was like. We do know that the kid has been around weapons—we saw a picture in the house.”
Irving pointed a finger of warning at Bosch.
“You be careful with the family,” he said. “Very careful. That has to be handled with a lot of finesse.”
“It will be.”
“I do not want that blowing up in our faces.”
“It won’t.”
Irving checked his watch once more.
“Why have your people not answered the pages?”
“I don’t know, Chief. I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Well, page them again. I need to meet with the chief. At eleven I want you and your team in the press conference room.”
“I’d rather get back to work on the case. I’ve got —”
“That is a direct order, Detective,” Irving said as he stood. “No debate. You won’t have to answer questions but I want your people on hand.”
Bosch picked up the clipboard and threw it back into his open briefcase.
“I’ll be there,” he said, though Irving was already through the door.
Bosch sat for a few minutes thinking. He knew Irving would now repackage the information he had given him and deliver it to the police chief. They would put their heads together and then reshape it once more before delivering it to the media.
He looked at his watch. He had a half hour until the press conference. He wondered if that was time enough to get over to the MetroLink station, find Elias’s wallet and watch and get back in time. He had to make sure he recovered the dead lawyer’s property, particularly because he had already told Irving it was in his possession.
Finally, he decided that there wasn’t enough time to do it. He decided to use the time to get coffee and to make a phone call. He walked to the cabinet once more and called his house. Once more the machine picked up. Bosch hung up after hearing his own voice saying no one was home.
14
Bosch decided he would be too nervous waiting until after the press conference and drove over to the MetroLink station at First and Hill. It was only three minutes away and he was pretty sure he could make it back to Parker Center for the start of the press conference. He parked illegally at the curb in front of the entrance to the subway platform. It was one of the few good things about driving a slickback; there was no need to worry about parking tickets. As he got out he removed the baton from the sleeve in the car’s door.
He trotted down the escalator and spotted the first trash can next to the automatic doors at the entrance to the station. The way he figured it, Rooker and his partner had left the Angels Flight crime scene with the stolen property and stopped at the first spot they knew they would find a trash can. One waited up top with the car while the other ran down the stairs to get rid of the wallet and watch. So Bosch was confident this first trash can would be the one. It was a large, white rectangular receptacle with the MetroLink symbol painted on its sides. A blue hood on top housed the push door. Bosch quickly lifted it off and looked down. The receptacle was full but there was no manila envelope visible in the debris at the top.
Bosch put the hood on the ground and used the baton to stir through the detritus of discarded newspapers, fast-food wrappers and garbage. The can smelled as though it had not been emptied in days, cleaned in months. He came across an empty purse and one old shoe. As he used the baton like an oar to dig deeper, he began to worry that one of the homeless men who populated downtown had beaten him to the can and found the watch and wallet first.
Near the bottom, just before he gave up to try one of the cans further into the station, he saw an envelope smeared with catsup and fished it out with two fingers. He tore it open, careful to take most of the catsup with the discarded end, and looked inside at a brown leather wallet and a gold Cartier watch.
Bosch used the escalator on the way up but this time was content to just ride as he looked in the envelope. The watchband was also gold or gold plated and was the accordion style that slipped over the wrist and hand. Bosch bounced the envelope a bit in his hand in order to move the watch without touching it. He was looking for any fragments of skin that might be caught in the band. He saw nothing.
Once he was back inside the slickback he put on gloves, took the wallet and watch out of the torn envelope and threw the envelope over the seat and to the floor in the back. He then opened the wallet and looked through its partitions. Elias had carried six credit cards in addition to identification and insurance cards. There were small studio-posed photos of his wife and son. In the billfold section there were three credit card receipts and a blank personal check. There was no currency.
Bosch’s briefcase was on the seat next to him. He opened it and took out the clipboard, then flipped through it until he found the victim’s property report. It detailed everything taken from each victim. Only a quarter had been found in Elias’s pockets at the time they were searched by a coroner’s assistant.
“You pricks,” Bosch said out loud as he realized that whoever took the wallet had decided to keep whatever cash had been in it. It was unlikely that Elias had been walking to his apartment with only the quarter it would cost him to ride Angels Flight.
Once more he wondered why he was sticking his neck out for people who didn’t deserve it. He tried to dismiss the thought, knowing that it was too late to do anything about it, but he couldn’t. He was a coconspirator now. Bosch shook his head in disgust with himself, then put the watch and wallet into separate plastic evidence bags after labeling each one with a white sticker on which he wrote the case number, the date and a time of 6:45 A.M. He then wrote a brief description of each item and the drawer of Elias’s desk in which it was found, initialed the corner of each sticker and put the bags into his briefcase.
Bosch looked at his watch before starting the car. He had ten minutes to make it to the press conference room. No sweat.
There were so many members of the media attending the press conference that several were standing outside the door to the police chief’s press room, unable to find space inside. Bosch pushed and excused and squeezed his way through them. Inside, he saw the back stage was lined wall to wall with television cameras on tripods, their operators standing behind them. He quickly counted twelve cameras and knew that the story would soon go national. There were eight television stations carrying local news in Los Angeles, including the Spanish-language channel. Every cop knew that if you saw more than eight camera crews at a scene or a press conference then you were talking network attention. You were working something huge, something dangerous.
In the middle of the room, every folding chair was taken by a reporter. There were close to forty, with the TV people clearly identifiable in their nice suits and makeup and the print an
d radio people just as recognizable as the ones wearing jeans and with ties pulled loose at the neck.
Bosch looked to the front stage and saw a flurry of activity around the podium, which had the LAPD chief’s badge affixed. Soundmen were taping their equipment to the ever-widening tree of microphones on the podium. One of them was standing directly behind the podium and giving a voice check. Behind and to the side of the podium stood Irving, conferring in whispers with two men in uniform, both wearing lieutenant’s stripes. Bosch recognized one of them as Tom O’Rourke, who worked in the media relations unit. The other Bosch did not recognize but assumed he was Irving’s adjutant, Michael Tulin, whose call had awakened Bosch just hours earlier. A fourth man stood on the other side of the podium by himself. He wore a gray suit and Bosch had no idea who he was. There was no sign of the police chief. Not yet. The police chief did not wait for the media to get ready. The media waited for him.
Irving spotted Bosch and signaled him to the front stage. Bosch walked up the three steps and Irving put a hand on his shoulder to usher him into a private huddle out of earshot of the others.
“Where are your people?”
“I haven’t heard back from them.”
“That is not acceptable, Detective. I told you to get them in here.”
“All I can say, Chief, is that they must be in the middle of a sensitive interview and didn’t want to break the momentum of the situation to call back on my pages. They are reinterviewing Elias’s wife and his son. It takes a lot of finesse, especially in a case like —”
“I am not interested in that. I wanted them here, period. At the next press conference you have them here or I will split your team up and send you to three divisions so far apart you will have to take a vacation day to have lunch together.”
Bosch studied Irving’s face for a moment.
“I understand, Chief.”
“Good. Remember it. Now we are about to get started here. O’Rourke is going now to get the chief and escort him in. You will not be answering any questions. You do not have to worry about that.”
Harry Bosch Novels, The: Volume 2 Page 92
