The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  “I guess you should take these back.”

  “Irving took the murder book and the evidence box. He’s got it all now except for those.”

  “You sound like you’re unhappy about that, or that you don’t trust him with it. That’s a change.”

  “Aren’t you the one who said I don’t trust anyone?”

  “Why don’t you trust him?”

  “I don’t know. I just lost my suspect. Gordon Mittel’s clear and I’m starting from ground zero. I was just thinking about the percentages…”

  “And?”

  “Well, I don’t know the numbers but a significant number of homicides are reported by the actual doer. You know, the husband who calls up crying, saying his wife is missing. More often than not, he’s just a bad actor. He killed her and thinks calling the cops helps convince everybody he’s clean. Look at the Menendez brothers. One of ’em calls up boohooing about mom and dad being dead. Turns out he and the brother were the ones who shotgunned them. There was a case up in the hills a few years back. This little girl was missing. It was Laurel Canyon. It made the papers, TV. So the people up there organized search parties and all of that and a few days later one of the searchers, a teen-aged boy who was one of the girl’s neighbors, found her body under a log near Lookout Mountain. It turned out he was the killer. I got him to confess in fifteen minutes. The whole time of the search I was just waiting for the one who would find the body. It was percentages. He was a suspect before I even knew who it was.”

  “Irving found your mother’s body.”

  “Yes. And he knew her before that. He told me once.”

  “It seems like a stretch to me.”

  “Yeah. Most people probably thought that about Mittel, too. Right up until they fished him out of the hot tub.”

  “Isn’t there an alternative scenario? Isn’t it possible that maybe the original detectives were correct in their assumption back then that there was a sex killer out there and that tracking him was hopeless?”

  “There’s always alternative scenarios.”

  “But you always seem drawn toward finding someone of power, a person of the establishment, to blame. Maybe that’s not the case here. Maybe it’s a symptom of your larger desire to blame society for what happened to your mother…and to you.”

  Bosch shook his head. He didn’t want to hear this.

  “You know, all this psychobabble…I don’t…Can we just talk about the photos?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She looked down at the envelope as if she was seeing right through it to the photos inside it.

  “Well, it was very difficult for me to look at them. As far as their forensic value goes, there wasn’t a lot there. The photos show what I would call a statement homicide. The fact that the ligature, the belt, was still wrapped around her neck seems to indicate that the killer wanted police to know exactly what he did, that he had been deliberate, that he had had control over this victim. I also think the choice of placement is significant as well. The trash bin had no top. It was open. That suggests that placing the body there may not have been an effort to hide it. It was also a—”

  “He was saying she was trash.”

  “Right. Again, a statement. If he was just getting rid of a body, he could’ve put it anywhere in that alley, but he chose the open dumpster. Subconsciously or not, he was making a statement about her. So to make a statement such as that about a person, he would have to have known her to some degree. Known about her. Known she was a prostitute. Known enough to judge her.”

  Irving came to Bosch’s mind again but he said nothing.

  “Well,” he said instead, “couldn’t it have been a statement about all women? Could it be some sick fuck who—excuse me—some nut who hated all women and thought all women were trash? That way he wouldn’t have to have known her. Maybe somebody who simply wanted to kill a prostitute, any prostitute, to make a statement about them.”

  “Yes, that’s a possibility, but like you I’m going with the percentages. The kind of sick fuck you are talking about—which, incidentally, in psychobabble we call a sociopath—is much rarer than the one who keys on specific targets, specific women.”

  Bosch shook his head dismissively and looked out the window.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just frustrating, that’s all. There wasn’t much in the murder book about them taking a hard look at anybody in her circle, any of the neighbors, nothing like that. To do it now is impossible. It makes me feel like it’s hopeless.”

  He thought of Meredith Roman. He could go to her to ask about his mother’s acquaintances and customers, but he didn’t know if he had the right to reawaken that part of her life.

  “You have to remember,” Hinojos said, “in 1961 a case like this would probably have seemed impossible to solve. They wouldn’t even have known how to start. It just didn’t happen as often as today.”

  “They’re almost impossible to solve today, too.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Bosch thought about the possibility that the killer was some hit-and-run nut. A serial killer who was long gone into the darkness of time. If that was the case, then his private investigation was over. It was a failure.

  “Do you have anything else on the photos?”

  “That’s really all I had—no, wait. There was one thing. And you may already have this.”

  She picked the envelope up and opened it. She reached in and began sliding out a photo.

  “I don’t want to look at that,” Bosch said quickly.

  “It’s not a photo of her. Actually, it’s her clothing, laid out on a table. Is that okay to look at?”

  She paused, her hand holding the photo half in and half out of the envelope. Bosch waved his hand, telling her to go ahead.

  “I’ve already seen the clothes.”

  “Then you’ve probably already considered this.”

  She slid the photo to the edge of the desk and Bosch leaned forward to study it. It was a color photo that had yellowed with age, even inside the envelope. The same items of clothing he had found in the evidence box were spread out on a table in a formation that outlined a body, in the way a woman might put them out on a bed before dressing. It reminded Bosch of cutouts for paper dolls. Even the belt with the sea shell buckle was there, but it was between the blouse and the black skirt, not at the imaginary neck.

  “Okay,” she said. “What I found odd here was the belt.”

  “The murder weapon.”

  “Yes. Look, it has the large silver shell as the buckle and there are smaller silver shells as ornamentation. It’s rather showy.”

  “Right.”

  “But the buttons on the blouse are gold. Also, the photos of the body, they show she was wearing gold teardrop earrings and a gold neck chain. Also a bracelet.”

  “Right, I know that. They were in the evidence box, too.”

  Bosch didn’t understand what she was getting at.

  “Harry, this is not a universal rule or anything, that’s why I hesitate to bring it up. But usually people—women—don’t mix and match gold and silver. And it appears to me your mother was well dressed on this evening. That she had jewelry on that matched the buttons of her blouse. She was coordinated and she had style. What I am saying is that I don’t think she would have worn this belt with those other items. It was silver and it was showy.”

  Bosch said nothing. Something was poking its way into his mind and its point was sharp.

  “And lastly, this skirt buttons on the hip. It’s a style that is still around and I even have something similar to it myself. What’s so functional about it is that because of the wide waistband it can be worn with or without a belt. There are no loops.”

  Bosch stared at the photo.

  “No loops.”

  “Right.”

  “So what you’re saying is…”

  “This might not have been her belt. It might have—”

  “But it was. I remember it. The sea shell be
lt. I gave it to her for her birthday. I identified it for the cops, for McKittrick the day he came to tell me.”

  “Well…then that shoots down everything I was going to say. I guess maybe when she came into the apartment the killer was already waiting with it.”

  “No, it didn’t happen in her apartment. They never found the crime scene. Listen, never mind whether it was her belt or not, what were you going to say?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, just a theory about it possibly being the property of another woman who may have been the motivating factor behind the killer’s action. It’s called aggression transference. It doesn’t make sense now with this evidence but there are examples of what I was going to suggest. A man takes his ex-girlfriend’s stockings and strangles another woman with them. In his mind, he’s strangling the girlfriend. Something like that. I was going to suggest it could have happened in this case with the belt.”

  But Bosch was no longer listening. He turned and looked out the window but wasn’t seeing anything either. In his mind, he was seeing the pieces falling together. The silver and gold, the belt with two of the punch holes worn, two friends as close as sisters. One for both and both for one.

  But then one was leaving the life. She’d found a white knight.

  And one was staying behind.

  “Harry, are you okay?”

  He looked over at Hinojos.

  “You just did it. I think.”

  “Did what?”

  He reached for his briefcase and from it withdrew the photo taken at the St. Patrick’s Day dance more than three decades before. He knew it was a long shot but he needed to check. This time he didn’t look at his mother. He looked at Meredith Roman, standing behind the sitting Johnny Fox. And for the first time he saw that she wore the belt with the silver sea shell buckle. She had borrowed it.

  It dawned on him then. She had helped Harry pick the belt out for his mother. She had coached him and she chose it not because his mother would like it but because she liked it and knew she would get to use it. Two friends who shared everything.

  Bosch shoved the photo back into the briefcase and shut it. He stood up.

  “I gotta go.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  BOSCH USED THE same ruse he had earlier to get back into Parker Center. Coming out of the elevator on the fourth floor, he practically ran into Hirsch, who was waiting to go down. He grabbed hold of the young print tech’s arm and held him in the hallway as the elevator doors closed.

  “You going home?”

  “I was trying to.”

  “I need one more favor. I’ll buy you lunch, I’ll buy you dinner, I’ll buy you whatever you want if you do it for me. It’s important and it won’t take long.”

  Hirsch looked at him. Bosch could see he was beginning to wish he’d never gotten involved.

  “What’s that saying, Hirsch? ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ Whaddaya say?”

  “I’ve never heard it.”

  “Well, I have.”

  “I’m having dinner with my girlfriend tonight and I—”

  “That’s great. This won’t take that long. You’ll make it to your dinner.”

  “All right. What is it you need?”

  “Hirsch, you’re my goddamn hero, you know that?”

  Bosch doubted he even had a girlfriend. They went back to the lab. It was deserted, since it was almost five on a slow day. Bosch put his briefcase on one of the abandoned desks and opened it. He found the Christmas card and took it out by holding a corner between two fingernails. He held it up for Hirsch to see.

  “This came in the mail five years ago. You think you can pull a print off it? A print from the sender? My prints are going to be on there, too, I’m sure.”

  Hirsch furrowed his brow and studied the card. His lower lip jutted outward as he contemplated the challenge.

  “All I can do is try. Prints on paper are usually pretty stable. The oils last long and sometimes leave ridge patterns in the paper even when they evaporate. Has it been in its envelope?”

  “Yeah, for five years, until last week.”

  “That helps.”

  Hirsch carefully took the card from Bosch and walked over to the work counter, where he opened the card and clipped it to a board.

  “I’m going to try the inside. It’s always better. Less chance of you having touched it inside. And the writer always touches the inside. Is it all right if this gets kind of ruined?”

  “Do what you have to do.”

  Hirsch studied the card with a magnifying glass, then lightly blew over the surface. He reached to a rack of spray bottles over the work table and took down one marked NINHYDRIN. He sprayed a light mist over the surface of the card and in a few minutes it began to turn purple around the edges. Then light shapes began to bloom like flowers on the card. Fingerprints.

  “I’ve got to bring this out some,” Hirsch said, more to himself than Bosch.

  Hirsch looked up at the rack and his eyes followed the row of chemical reagents until he found what he was looking for. A spray bottle marked ZINC CHLORIDE. He sprayed it on the card.

  “This should bring the storm clouds in.”

  The prints turned the deep purple shade of heavy rain clouds. Hirsch then took down a bottle labeled PD, which Bosch knew meant physical developer. After the card was misted with PD, the prints turned a grayish black and were more defined. Hirsch looked them over with his magnifying lamp.

  “I think this is good enough. We won’t need the laser. Now, look at these here, Detective.”

  Hirsch pointed to a print that appeared to have been left by a thumb on the left side of Meredith Roman’s signature and two smaller finger marks above it.

  “These look like marks left by someone trying to hold the card steady while it was being written on. Any chance that you might’ve touched it this way?”

  Hirsch held his fingers in place an inch over the card in the same position that the hand that left the prints would have been in. Bosch shook his head.

  “All I ever did was open it and read it. I think those are the prints we want.”

  “Okay. Now what?”

  Bosch went to his briefcase and pulled out the print cards Hirsch had returned to him earlier in the day. He found the card containing the lifts from the belt with the sea shell buckle.

  “Here,” he said. “Compare this to what you got on the Christmas card.”

  “You got it.”

  Hirsch pulled the magnifying glass with the ringed light attachment in front of him and once again began his tennis match eye movement as he compared the prints.

  Bosch tried to envision what had happened. Marjorie Lowe was going to Las Vegas to get married to Arno Conklin. The very thought of it must have been absurdly wonderful to her. She had to go home and pack. The plan was to drive through the night. If Arno was planning to bring along a best man, perhaps Marjorie was to bring a maid of honor. Maybe she would have gone upstairs to ask Meredith to come. Or maybe she would have gone to her to borrow back the belt that her son had given her. Maybe she would have gone to say good-bye.

  But something happened when she got there. And on her happiest night Meredith killed her.

  Bosch thought about the interview reports that had been in the murder book. Meredith told Eno and McKittrick that Marjorie’s date on the night she died had been arranged by Johnny Fox. But she didn’t go to the party herself because she said Fox had beaten her the night before and she was not presentable. The detectives noted in the report that she had a bruise on her face and a split lip.

  Why didn’t they see it then, Bosch wondered. Meredith had sustained those injuries while killing Marjorie. The drop of blood on Marjorie’s blouse had come from Meredith.

  But Bosch knew why they hadn’t seen it. He knew the investigators dismissed any thought in that direction, if they ever even had any, because she was a woman. And because Fox backed her story. He admitted he beat her.

  Bosch now saw what he believed was the truth. Mered
ith killed Marjorie and then hours later called Fox at his card game to give him the news. She asked him to help her get rid of the body and hide her involvement.

  Fox must have readily agreed, even to the point of his willingness to say he beat her, because he saw the larger picture. He lost a source of income when Marjorie was killed but that would have been tempered by the increased leverage the murder would give him over Conklin and Mittel. Keeping it unsolved would make it even better. He’d always be a threat to them. He could walk into the police station at any time to tell what he knew and lay it on Conklin.