Delacroix moved toward the couch and said, “Look, you don’t have to search the place. I know why you’re here.”
Bosch glanced at Edgar and then at Delacroix.
“Yeah?” Edgar said. “Why are we here?”
Delacroix dropped himself heavily into the middle of the couch. The springs were shot. He sank into the midsection, and the ends of the cushion on either side of him rose into the air like the bows of twin Titanics going down.
“The gas,” Delacroix said. “And I hardly used any of it. I don’t go anywhere but back and forth from the range. I have a restricted license because of my DUI.”
“The gas?” Edgar asked. “What are—”
“Mr. Delacroix, we’re not here about you stealing gas,” Bosch said.
He picked up one of the videotapes off the stack on the television. There was tape on the spine with writing on it. First Infantry, episode 46. He put it back down and glanced at the writing on some of the other tapes. They were all episodes of the television show Delacroix had worked on as an actor more than thirty years before.
“That’s not really our gig,” he added, without looking at Delacroix.
“Then what? What do you want?”
Now Bosch looked at him.
“We’re here about your son.”
Delacroix stared at him for a long moment, his mouth slowly coming open and exposing his yellowed teeth.
“Arthur,” he finally said.
“Yeah. We found him.”
Delacroix’s eyes dropped from Bosch’s and seemed to leave the trailer as he studied a far-off memory. In his look was knowledge. Bosch saw it. His instincts told him that what they would tell Delacroix next he would already know. He glanced over at Edgar to see if he had seen it. Edgar gave a single short nod.
Bosch looked back at the man on the couch.
“You don’t seem very excited for a father who hasn’t seen his son in more than twenty years,” he said.
Delacroix looked at him.
“I guess that’s because I know he’s dead.”
Bosch studied him for a long moment, his breath holding in his lungs.
“Why would you say that? What would make you think that?”
“Because I know. I’ve known all along.”
“What have you known?”
“That he wasn’t coming back.”
This wasn’t going the way of any of the scenarios Bosch had imagined. It seemed to him that Delacroix had been waiting for them, expecting them, maybe for years. He decided that they might have to change the strategy and arrest Delacroix and advise him of his rights.
“Am I under arrest?” Delacroix asked, as if he had joined Bosch in his thoughts.
Bosch glanced at Edgar again, wondering if his partner had sensed how their plan was now slipping away from them.
“We thought we might want to talk first. You know, informally.”
“You might as well arrest me,” Delacroix said quietly.
“You think so? Does that mean you don’t want to talk to us?”
Delacroix shook his head slowly and went into the long-distance stare again.
“No, I’ll talk to you,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Tell us about what?”
“How it happened.”
“How what happened?”
“My son.”
“You know how it happened?”
“Sure I know. I did it.”
Bosch almost cursed out loud. Their suspect had literally just confessed before they had advised him of his rights, including the right to avoid giving self-incriminating statements.
“Mr. Delacroix, we’re going to cut this off right here. I am going to advise you of your rights now.”
“I just want to—”
“No, please, sir, don’t say anything else. Not yet. Let’s get this rights thing taken care of and then we’ll be more than happy to listen to anything you want to tell us.”
Delacroix waved a hand like it didn’t matter to him, like nothing mattered.
“Jerry, where’s your recorder? I never got mine back from IAD.”
“Uh, in the car. I don’t know about the batteries, though.”
“Go check.”
Edgar left the trailer and Bosch waited in silence. Delacroix put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. Bosch studied his posture. It didn’t happen often, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had scored a confession during his first meeting with a suspect.
Edgar came back in with a tape recorder but shook his head.
“Batteries are dead. I thought you had yours.”
“Shit. Then take notes.”
Bosch took out his badge case and took out one of his business cards. He’d had them made with the Miranda rights advisory printed on the back, along with a signature line. He read the advisory statement and asked Delacroix if he understood his rights. Delacroix nodded his head.
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes, it’s a yes.”
“Then sign on the line beneath what I just read to you.”
He gave Delacroix the card and a pen. Once it was signed, Bosch returned the card to his badge wallet. He stepped over and sat on the edge of the recliner chair.
“Now, Mr. Delacroix, do you want to repeat what you just said to us a few minutes ago?”
Delacroix shrugged like it was no big deal.
“I killed my son. Arthur. I killed him. I knew you people would show up someday. It took a long time.”
Bosch looked over at Edgar. He was writing in a notebook. They would have some record of Delacroix’s admission. He looked back at the suspect and waited, hoping the silence would be an invitation for Delacroix to say more. But he didn’t. Instead, the suspect buried his face in his hands again. His shoulders soon began shaking as he started to cry.
“God help me . . . I did it.”
Bosch looked back at Edgar and raised his eyebrows. His partner gave a quick thumbs-up sign. They had more than enough to move to the next stage; the controlled and recorded setting of an interview room at the police station.
“Mr. Delacroix, do you have a cat?” Bosch asked. “Where’s your cat?”
Delacroix peeked his wet eyes through his fingers.
“He’s around. Probably sleepin’ in the bed. Why?”
“Well, we’re going to call Animal Control and they’ll come get him to take care of him. You’re going to have to come with us. We’re going to place you under arrest now. And we’ll talk more at the police station.”
Delacroix dropped his hands and seemed upset.
“No. Animal Control won’t take care of him. They’ll gas him the minute they find out I won’t be coming back.”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here.”
“Mrs. Kresky will take care of him. She’s next door. She can come in and feed him.”
Bosch shook his head. The whole thing was foundering because of a cat.
“We can’t do that. We have to seal this place until we can search it.”
“What do you have to search it for?” Delacroix said, real anger in his voice now. “I’m telling you what you need to know. I killed my son. It was an accident. I hit him too hard, I guess. I . . .”
Delacroix put his face back into his hands and tearfully mumbled, “God . . . what did I do?”
Bosch checked Edgar; he was writing. Bosch stood up. He wanted to get Delacroix to the station and into one of the interview rooms. His anxiety was gone now, replaced by a sense of urgency. Attacks of conscience and guilt were ephemeral. He wanted to get Delacroix locked down on tape—video and audio—before he decided to talk to a lawyer and before he realized that he was talking himself into a 9 × 6 room for the rest of his life.
“Okay, we’ll figure out the cat thing later,” he said. “We’ll leave enough food for now. Stand up, Mr. Delacroix, we’re going to go.”
Delacroix stood up.
“Can I change into something nicer? This is just
old stuff I was wearing around here.”
“No, don’t worry about that,” Bosch said. “We’ll bring you clothes to wear later on.”
He didn’t bother telling him that those clothes wouldn’t be his. What would happen was that he’d be given a county jail–issued jumpsuit with a number across the back. His jumpsuit would be yellow, the color given to custodies on the high-power floor—the murderers.
“Are you going to handcuff me?” Delacroix asked.
“It’s department policy,” Bosch said. “We have to.”
He came around the coffee table and turned Delacroix so he could cuff his hands behind his back.
“I was an actor, you know. I once played a prisoner in an episode of The Fugitive. The first series, with David Janssen. It was just a small role. I sat on a bench next to Janssen. That’s all I did. I was supposed to be on drugs, I think.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He gently pushed Delacroix toward the trailer’s narrow door.
“I don’t know why I just remembered that,” Delacroix said.
“It’s all right,” Edgar said. “People remember the strangest things at a time like this.”
“Just be careful on these steps,” Bosch said.
They led him out, Edgar in front and Bosch behind him.
“Is there a key?” Bosch asked.
“On the kitchen counter there,” Delacroix said.
Bosch went back inside and found the keys. He then started opening cabinets in the kitchenette until he found the box of cat food. He opened it and dumped it out onto the paper plate under the table. There was not very much food. Bosch knew he would have to do something about the animal later.
When Bosch came out of the trailer Edgar had already put Delacroix into the rear of the slickback. He saw a neighbor watching from the open front door of a nearby trailer. He turned and closed and locked Delacroix’s door.
36
BOSCH stuck his head into Lt. Billets’s office. She was turned sideways at her desk and working on a computer at a side table. Her desk had been cleared. She was about to go home for the day.
“Yes?” she said without looking to see who it was.
“Looks like we got lucky,” Bosch said.
She turned from the computer and saw it was Bosch.
“Let me guess. Delacroix invites you in and just sits down and confesses.”
Bosch nodded.
“Just about.”
Her eyes grew wide in surprise.
“You are fucking kidding me.”
“He says he did it. We had to shut him up so we could get him back here on tape. It was like he had been waiting for us to show up.”
Billets asked a few more questions and Bosch ended up recapping the entire visit to the trailer, including the problem they had in not having a working tape recorder with which to take Delacroix’s confession. Billets grew concerned and annoyed, equally with Bosch and Edgar for not being prepared and Bradley of IAD for not returning Bosch’s tape recorder.
“All I can say is that this better not put hair on the cake, Harry,” she said, referring to the possibility of a legal challenge to any confession because Delacroix’s initial words were not on tape. “If we lose this one because of a screwup on our part . . .”
She didn’t finish but didn’t need to.
“Look, I think we’ll be all right. Edgar got everything he said down verbatim. We stopped as soon as we got enough to hook him up and now we’ll lock it all down with sound and video.”
Billets seemed barely placated.
“And what about Miranda? You’re confident we will not have a Miranda situation,” she said, the last part not a question but an order.
“I don’t see it. He started spouting off before we had a chance to advise him. Then he kept talking afterward. Sometimes it goes like that. You’re ready to go with the battering ram and they just open the door for you. Whoever he gets as a lawyer might have a heart attack and start screaming about it but nothing’s going to come of it. We’re clean, Lieutenant.”
Billets nodded, a sign that Bosch was convincing her.
“I wish they were all this easy,” she said. “What about the DA’s office?”
“I’m calling them next.”
“Okay, which room if I want to take a look?”
“Three.”
“Okay, Harry, go wrap him up.”
She turned back to her computer. Bosch threw a salute at her and was about to duck out of the doorway when he stopped. She sensed he had not left and turned back to him.
“What is it?”
Bosch shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know. The whole way in I was thinking about what could have been avoided if we just went to him instead of dancing around him, gathering string.”
“Harry, I know what you’re thinking and there’s no way in the world you could have known that this guy—after twenty-some years—was just waiting for you to knock on his door. You handled it the right way and if you had it to do again you would still do it the same way. You circle the prey. What happened with Officer Brasher had nothing to do with how you ran this case.”
Bosch looked at her for a moment and then nodded. What she said would help ease his conscience.
Billets turned back to her computer.
“Like I said, go wrap him up.”
Bosch went back to the homicide table to call the District Attorney’s Office to advise that an arrest had been made in a murder case and that a confession was being taken. He talked to a supervisor named O’Brien and told her that either he or his partner would be coming in to file charges by the end of the day. O’Brien, who was familiar with the case only through media reports, said she wanted to send a prosecutor to the station to oversee the handling of the confession and the forward movement of the case at this stage.
Bosch knew that with rush hour traffic out of downtown it would still be a minimum of forty-five minutes before the prosecutor got to the station. He told O’Brien the prosecutor was welcome but that he wasn’t going to wait for anyone before taking the suspect’s confession. O’Brien suggested he should.
“Look, this guy wants to talk,” Bosch said. “In forty-five minutes or an hour it could be a different story. We can’t wait. Tell your guy to knock on the door at room three when he gets here. We’ll bring him into it as soon as we can.”
In a perfect world the prosecutor would be there for an interview but Bosch knew from years working cases that a guilty conscience doesn’t always stay guilty. When someone tells you they want to confess to a killing, you don’t wait. You turn on the tape recorder and say, “Tell me all about it.”
O’Brien reluctantly agreed, citing her own experiences, and they hung up. Bosch immediately picked the phone back up and called Internal Affairs and asked for Carol Bradley. He was transferred.
“This is Bosch, Hollywood Division, where’s my damn tape recorder?”
There was silence in response.
“Bradley? Hello? Are you—”
“I’m here. I have your recorder here.”
“Why did you take it? I told you to listen to the tape. I didn’t say take my machine, I don’t need it anymore.”
“I wanted to review it and have the tape checked, to make sure it was continuous.”
“Then open it up and take the tape. Don’t take the machine.”
“Detective, sometimes they need the original recorder to authenticate the tape.”
Bosch shook his head in frustration.
“Jesus, why are you doing this? You know who the leak is, why are you wasting time?”
Again there was a pause before she answered.
“I needed to cover all bases. Detective, I need to run my investigation the way I see fit.”
Now Bosch paused for a moment, wondering if he was missing something, if there was something else going on. He finally decided he couldn’t worry about it. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. His case.
“Cover the bases, that’s gre
at,” he said. “Well, I almost lost a confession today because I didn’t have my machine. I would appreciate it if you would get it back to me.”
“I’m finished with it and am putting it in inter-office dispatch right now.”
“Thank you. Good-bye.”
He hung up, just as Edgar showed up at the table with three cups of coffee. It made Bosch think of something they should do.
“Who’s got the watch down there?” he asked.
“Mankiewicz was in there,” Edgar said. “So was Young.”
Bosch poured the coffee from the Styrofoam container into the mug he got out of his drawer. He then picked up the phone and dialed the watch office. Mankiewicz answered.
“You got anybody in the bat cave?”
“Bosch? I thought you might take some time off.”
“You thought wrong. What about the cave?”
“No, nobody till about eight today. What do you need?”
“I’m about to take a confession and don’t want any lawyer to be able to open the box once I wrap it. My guy smells like Ancient Age but I think he’s straight. I’d like to make a record of it, just the same.”
“This the bones case?”
“Yeah.”
“Bring him down and I’ll do it. I’m certified.”
“Thanks, Mank.”
He hung up and looked at Edgar.
“Let’s take him down to the cave and see what he blows. Just to be safe.”
“Good idea.”
They took their coffees into interview room 3, where they had earlier shackled Delacroix to the table’s center ring. They released him from the cuffs and let him take a few gulps of his coffee before walking him down the back hallway to the station’s small jail facility. The jail essentially consisted of two large holding cells for drunks and prostitutes. Arrestees of a higher order were usually transported to the main city or county jail. There was a small third cell that was known as the bat cave, as in blood alcohol testing.
They met Mankiewicz in the hallway and followed him to the cave, where he turned on the Breathalyzer and instructed Delacroix to blow into a clear plastic tube attached to the machine. Bosch noticed that Mankiewicz had a black mourning ribbon across his badge for Brasher.
In a few minutes they had the result. Delacroix blew a .003, not even close to the legal limit for driving. There was no standard set for giving a confession to murder.
Michael Connelly Page 24
