The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  What Fox didn’t realize was that Mittel could be as cunning and vicious as he was. He learned that a year later on La Brea Boulevard.

  Fox’s motivation was clear. Bosch still wasn’t sure about Meredith’s. Could she have done it for the reasons Bosch had set out in his mind? Would the abandonment of a friend have led to the rage of murder? He began to believe there was still something left out. He still didn’t know it all. The last secret was with Meredith Roman and he would have to go get it.

  An odd thought pushed through these questions to Bosch. The time of death of Marjorie Lowe was about midnight. Fox didn’t get his call and leave his card game until roughly four hours later. Bosch now assumed that the murder scene was Meredith’s apartment. Now he wondered, what did she do in that place for four hours with the body of her best friend lying there?

  “Detective?”

  Bosch looked away from his thoughts to Hirsch, who was sitting at the desk nodding his head.

  “You got something?”

  “Bingo.”

  Bosch just nodded.

  It was confirmation of more than just the match of fingerprints. He knew it was a confirmation that all the things he had accepted as the truths of his life could be as false as Meredith Roman.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  THE SKY WAS the color of a ninhydrin bloom on white paper. It was cloudless and growing dark purple with the aging of dusk. Bosch thought of the sunsets he had told Jazz about and realized that even that was a lie. Everything was a lie.

  He stopped the Mustang at the curb in front of Katherine Register’s home. There was another lie. The woman who lived here was Meredith Roman. Changing her name didn’t change what she had done, didn’t change her from guilty to innocent.

  There were no lights on that he could see from the street, no sign of life. He was prepared to wait but didn’t want to deal with the thoughts that would intrude as he sat alone in the car. He got out, crossed the lawn to the front porch and knocked on the door.

  While he waited, he got out a cigarette and was lighting it when he suddenly stopped. He realized that what he was doing was his reflex of smoking at death scenes where the bodies were old. His instincts had reacted before he had consciously registered the odor from the house. Outside the door it was barely noticeable, but it was there. He looked back out to the street and saw no one. He looked back at the door and tried the knob. It turned. As he opened it, he felt a rush of cool air and the odor came out to meet him.

  The house was still, the only sound the hum of the air conditioner in the window of her bedroom. That was where he found her. He could tell right away that Meredith Roman had been dead for several days. Her body was in the bed, the covers pulled up to her head on the pillow. Only her face, what was left of it, was visible. Bosch’s eyes did not linger on the image. The deterioration had been extensive and he guessed that maybe she had been dead since the day he had visited.

  On the table next to the bed were two empty glasses, a half-gone fifth of vodka and an empty bottle of prescription pills. Bosch bent down to read the label and saw the prescription was for Katherine Register, one each night before bed. Sleeping pills.

  Meredith had faced her past and administered her own penance. She had taken the blue canoe. Suicide. Bosch knew it wasn’t for him to decide but it looked that way. He turned to the bureau because he remembered the Kleenex box and he wanted to use a tissue to cover his tracks. But there on the top, near the photos in gilded frames, was an envelope that had his name on it.

  He picked it up, took some tissues and left the room. In the living room, a bit farther away from the source of the horrible odor but not far enough, he turned the envelope over to open it and noticed the flap was torn. The envelope had been opened already. He guessed maybe Meredith had reopened it to read again what she had written. Maybe she’d had second thoughts about what she was doing. He dismissed the question and took the note out. It was dated a week earlier. Wednesday. She had written it the day after his visit.

  Dear Harry,

  If you are reading this then my fears that you would learn the truth were well founded. If you are reading this then the decision I have made tonight was the correct one and I have no regrets as I make it. You see, I would rather face the judgment of afterlife than have you look at me while knowing the truth.

  I know what I have taken from you. I have known all my life. It does no good to say I am sorry or to try to explain. But it still amazes me how one’s life can change forever in a few moments of uncontrolled rage. I was angry at Marjorie when she came to me that night so full of hope and happiness. She was leaving me. For a life with you. With him. For a life we had only dreamed was possible.

  What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures? I was jealous and angry and I struck at her. I then made a feeble effort to cover what I had done. I am sorry, Harry, but I took her from you and with that took any chance you ever had. I’ve carried the guilt every day since then and I take it with me now. I should have paid for my sin a long time ago but someone convinced me otherwise and helped me get away. There is no one left to convince me now.

  I don’t ask for your forgiveness, Harry. That would be an insult. I guess all I want is for you to know my regrets and to know that sometimes people who get away don’t really get away. I didn’t. Not then, not now.

  Good-bye.

  Meredith

  Bosch reread the note and then stood there thinking about it for a long time. Finally, he folded it and put it back in its envelope. He walked over to the fireplace, lit the envelope on fire with his Bic and then tossed it onto the grate. He watched the paper bend and burn until it bloomed like a black rose and went out.

  He went to the kitchen and lifted the receiver off the phone after wrapping his hand in tissue. He put it on the counter and dialed nine-one-one. As he walked toward the front door, he could hear the tiny voice of the Santa Monica police operator asking who was there and what the problem was.

  He left the door unlocked and wiped the exterior knob with the tissue after stepping out onto the porch. He heard a voice from behind him.

  “She writes a good letter, don’t she?”

  Bosch turned around. Vaughn was sitting on the rattan love seat on the porch. He was holding a new twenty-two in his hand. It looked like another Beretta. He looked none the worse for wear. He didn’t have the black eyes that Bosch had, or the stitches.

  “Vaughn.”

  Bosch couldn’t think of anything else to say. He couldn’t imagine how he had been found by him. Could Vaughn have been daring enough to hang around Parker Center and follow Bosch from there? Bosch looked out into the street and wondered how long it would take the police operator to dispatch a car to the address the computer gave her for the 911 call. Even though Bosch had said nothing on the line, he knew they would eventually send a car to check it out. He had wanted them to find Meredith. If they took their time about it, they would probably find him as well. He had to stall Vaughn for as long as possible.

  “Yeah, nice note,” the man with the gun said. “But she left something out, don’t you think?”

  “What’s left out?”

  Vaughn seemed not to have heard him.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “I knew your mother had a kid. But I never met you, never even saw you. She kept you away from me. I wasn’t good enough, I guess.”

  Bosch continued to stare as things began to fall together.

  “Johnny Fox.”

  “In the flesh.”

  “I don’t understand. Mittel…”

  “Mittel had me killed? No, not really. I killed myself, I guess you could say. I read that story you people put in the paper today. But you had it wrong. Most of it, at least.”

  Bosch nodded. He knew now.

  “Meredith killed your mother, kid. Sorry about that. I just helped her take care of it after the fact.”

  “And then you used her death to get to Conklin.”

  Bosch didn’t need any confirmation
from Fox. He was just trying to chew up time.

  “Yeah, that was the plan, to get to Conklin. Worked pretty good, too. Got me out of the sewer. Only I found out pretty fast that the real power was Mittel. I could tell. Between the two of them, Mittel could go the distance. So I threw in with him, you could say. He wanted a better hold on the golden boy. He wanted an ace up his own sleeve. So I helped.”

  “By killing yourself? I don’t get it.”

  “Mittel told me that supreme power over someone is the power they don’t know you have until you need to use it. You see, Bosch, Mittel always suspected that Conklin was really the one who did your mother.”

  Bosch nodded. He saw where the story was going.

  “And you never told Mittel that Conklin wasn’t the killer.”

  “That’s right. I never told him about Meredith. So knowing that, look at it from his side. Mittel figured that if Conklin was the doer and he believed I was dead, then he’d think he was home free. See, I was the only loose end, the one who could tie him in. Mittel wanted him to think he was clear. He wanted it because he wanted Conklin at ease. He didn’t want him to lose his drive, his ambition. Conklin was going places and Mittel didn’t want him to even hesitate. But he also wanted to keep an ace up his sleeve, something that he could always pull out if Conklin tried to step out of line. That was me. I was the ace. So we arranged that little hit and run, me and Mittel. Thing is, Mittel never had to play the ace with Conklin. Conklin gave Mittel a lot of good years after that. By the time he backed out on that attorney general thing, Mittel was well diversified. By then he had a congressman, a senator, a quarter of the local pols on his client list. You could say by then he had already climbed on Conklin’s shoulders to the higher ground. He didn’t need Arno anymore.”

  Bosch nodded again and thought a moment about the scenario. All those years. Conklin believed it had been Mittel who killed her and Mittel believed it had been Conklin. It was neither.

  “So who was the one you ran over?”

  “Oh, just somebody. It doesn’t matter. He was just a volunteer, you could say. I picked him up on Mission Street. He thought he was handing out Conklin fliers. I planted my ID in the bottom of the satchel I gave him. He never knew what hit him or why.”

  “How’d you get away with it?” Bosch asked, though he thought he already knew the answer to that as well.

  “Mittel had Eno on the line. We set it up so that it happened when he was next up on call. He took care of everything and Mittel took care of him.”

  Bosch could see that the setup also gave Fox a share of power over Mittel. And he’d ridden along with him ever since. A little plastic surgery, a nicer set of clothes, and he was Jonathan Vaughn, aid to the wunderkind political strategist and rainmaker.

  “So how’d you know I’d show up here?”

  “I’d kept tabs on her over the years. I knew she was here. Alone. After our little run-in on the hill the other night, I came here to hide, to sleep. You gave me a headache—what the hell you hit me with?”

  “The eight ball.”

  “I guess I should have thought of that when I put you in there. Anyway, I found her like that in the bed. I read the note and knew who you were. I figured you’d be back. Especially after you left that message on the phone yesterday.”

  “You’ve been here all this time with…”

  “You get used to it. I put the air on high, closed the door. You get used to it.”

  Bosch tried to imagine it. Sometimes he believed that he was used to the smell, but he knew he wasn’t.

  “What did she leave out of the note, Fox?”

  “That was the part about her wanting Conklin for herself. See, I tried her with Conklin first. But it didn’t take. Then I set him up with Marjorie and got the fireworks. Nobody expected that he’d want to end up marrying her, though. Least of all Meredith. There was only room on the horse with the white knight for one rider. That was Marjorie. Meredith couldn’t handle that. Must’ve been a hell of a cat fight.”

  Bosch said nothing. But the truth stung his face like a sunburn. That’s what it had all come down to, a cat fight between whores.

  “Let’s go to your car now,” Fox said.

  “Why?”

  “We need to go to your place now.”

  “For what?”

  Fox never answered. A Santa Monica squad car stopped in front of the house just as Bosch asked his question. Two officers started getting out.

  “Be cool, Bosch,” Fox said quietly. “Be cool if you want to live a little longer.”

  Bosch saw Fox turn the aim of his gun toward the approaching officers. They could not see it because of the thick bougainvillea running along the front of the porch. One of them started to speak.

  “Did someone here call nine—”

  Bosch took two steps and launched himself over the railing to the lawn. As he did it, he yelled a warning.

  “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!”

  On the ground, Bosch heard Fox start running on the wood decking of the porch. He guessed he was going for the door. Then came the first shot. He was sure it came from behind him, from Fox. Then the two cops opened up like the Fourth of July. Bosch couldn’t count all the shots. He stayed on the grass with his arms spread wide and his hands up, just hoping they wouldn’t send one his way.

  It was over in no more than eight seconds. When the echoes died and silence returned, Bosch yelled again.

  “I’m unarmed! I’m a police officer! I am no threat to you! I am an unarmed police officer!”

  He felt the end of a hot gun barrel pressed against his neck.

  “Where’s the ID?”

  “Right inside coat pocket.”

  Then he remembered he still didn’t have it. The cop’s hands grasped him by the shoulders.

  “I’m going to roll you over.”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t have it.”

  “What is this? Roll over.”

  Bosch complied.

  “I don’t have it with me. I’ve got other ID though. Left inside pocket.”

  The cop started going through his jacket. Bosch was scared.

  “I’m not going to do anything wrong here.”

  “Just be quiet.”

  The cop got Bosch’s wallet out and looked at the driver’s license that was behind a clear plastic window.

  “Whaddaya got, Jimmy?” the other cop yelled. Bosch couldn’t see him. “He legit?”

  “Says he’s a cop, got no badge. Got a DL here.”

  Then he hunched back down over Bosch and patted the rest of his body in a search for weapons.

  “I’m clean.”

  “All right, turn back over.”

  Bosch did so and his hands were cuffed behind his back. He then heard the man above him call in for backup and an ambulance on his radio.

  “All right, get up.”

  Bosch did as he was told. For the first time he could see the porch. The other cop stood with his handgun pointing down at Fox’s crumpled body at the front door. Bosch was led up the steps to the porch. He could see Fox was still alive. His chest was heaving, he had wounds in both legs and the stomach and it looked like one slug had gone through both cheeks. His jaw hung open. But his eyes seemed even wider as he stared at death coming for him.

  “I knew you’d fire, you fuck,” Bosch said to him. “Just die now.”

  “Shut up,” the one called Jimmy ordered. “Right now.”

  The other cop pulled him away from the front door. Out in the street, Bosch could see neighbors joining together in little knots or watching from their own porches. Nothing like gunshots in suburbia for getting people together, he thought. The smell of spent gunpowder in the air does it better than a barbecue any day.

  The young cop got right up in Bosch’s face. Harry could see that his name plate identified him as D. Sparks.

  “Okay, what the fuck’s going on here? If you’re a cop, tell us what’s going on.”

  “You two are a couple of heroes
, that’s what’s going on.”

  “Tell the story, man. I don’t have time for bullshit.”

  Bosch could hear approaching sirens now.

  “My name’s Bosch. I’m with LAPD. This man you shot is the suspect in the killing of Arno Conklin, the former district attorney of this county, and LAPD Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. I’m sure you’ve heard about these cases.”

  “Jim, you hear that?” He turned back to Bosch. “Where’s your badge?”

  “Stolen. I can give you a number to call. Assistant Chief Irvin Irving. He’ll tell you about me.”