Harry Bosch 02 - The Black Ice

by Michael Connelly

  Harry sensed that now he was the one who had shaken a bad feeling loose and sent her traveling with it. Now might be the right time.

  "You want to talk about it?"

  "No. I mean I do, but I can't. I trust you, Harry, but I think I have to keep this close for the time being."

  He nodded and let it go, but he intended to come back to it later and find out what had gone wrong on the Moore autopsy. He took his notebook out of his coat pocket and put it on the table.

  "Okay, then, tell me about Juan Doe #67."

  She pushed the soup bowl to the side of the table and pulled a leather briefcase onto her lap. She pulled out a thin manila file and opened it in front of her.

  "Okay. This is a copy so you can keep it when I'm done explaining. I went over the notes and everything else Salazar had on this. I guess you know, cause of death was multiple blunt-force trauma to the head. Crushing blows to the frontal, parietal, sphenoid and supraorbital."

  As she described these injuries she touched the top of her forehead, the back of her head, her left temple and rim of her left eye. She did not look up from the paperwork.

  "Any one of these was fatal. There were other defensive wounds which you can look at later. Um, he extracted wood splinters from two of the head injuries. Looks like you are talking about something like a baseball bat, but not as wide, I think. Tremendous crushing blows, so I think we are talking about something with some leverage. Not a stick. Bigger. A pick handle, shovel, something like—possibly a pool cue. But most likely something unfinished. Like I said, Sally pulled splinters out of the wounds. I'm not sure a pool cue with a sanded and lacquered finish would leave splinters."

  She studied the notes a moment.

  "The other thing—I don't know if Porter told you this, but this body most likely was dumped in that location. Time of death is at least six hours before discovery. Judging by the traffic in that alley and to the rear door of the restaurant, that body could not have gone unnoticed there for six hours. It had to have been dumped."

  "Yeah, that was in his notes."

  "Good."

  She started turning through the pages. Briefly looking at the autopsy photos and putting them to the side.

  "Okay, here it is. Tox results aren't back yet but the colors of the blood and liver indicate there will be nothing there. I'm just guessing—or, rather, Sally is just guessing, so don't hold us to that."

  Harry nodded. He hadn't taken any notes yet. He lit a cigarette and she didn't seem to mind. She had never protested before, though once when he was attending an autopsy she walked in from the adjoining suite and showed him a lung from a forty-year-old, three-pack-a-day man. It looked like an old black loafer that had been run over by a truck.

  "But as you know is routine," she continued, "we took swabs and did the analysis on the stomach contents. First, in the earwax we found a kind of brown dust. We combed some of it out of the hair, and got some from the fingernails, too."

  Bosch thought of tar heroin, an ingredient in black ice.

  "Heroin?"

  "Good guess, but no."

  "Just brown dust."

  Bosch was writing in his notebook now.

  "Yeah, we put it on some slides and blew it up and as near as we can tell it's wheat. Wheat dust. It's—it apparently is pulverized wheat."

  "Like cereal? He had cereal in his ears and hair?"

  A waiter in a white shirt and black tie with a brush mustache and his best dour Russian look came to the table to ask if they wanted anything else. He looked at the stack of photos next to Teresa. On top was one of Juan Doe #67 naked on a stainless steel table. Teresa quickly covered it with the file and Harry ordered two more beers. The man walked slowly away from the table.

  "You mean some kind of wheat cereal?" Bosch asked again. "Like the dust at the bottom of the box or something?"

  "Not exactly. Keep that thought, though, and let me move on. It will all tie up."

  He waved her on.

  "On the nasal swabs and stomach content, two things came up that are very interesting. It's kind of why I like what I do, despite other people not liking it for me." She looked up from the file and smiled at him. "Anyway, in the stomach contents, Salazar identified coffee and masticated rice, chicken, bell pepper, various spices and pig intestine. To make a long story short, it was chorizo— Mexican sausage. The intestine used as sausage casing leads me to believe it was some kind of homemade sausage, not manufactured product. He had eaten this shortly before death. There had been almost no breakdown in the stomach yet. He may've even been eating when he was assaulted. I mean, the throat and mouth were clear but there was still debris in the teeth.

  "And by the way, they were all original teeth. No dental work at all—ever. You getting the picture that this man was not from around here?"

  Bosch nodded, remembering Porter's notes said all of Juan Doe #67's clothing was made in Mexico. He was writing in the notebook.

  She said, "There was also this in the stomach."

  She slid a Polaroid photograph across the table. It was of a pinkish insect with one wing missing and the other broken. It looked wet, as indeed it would be, considering where it had been found. It lay on a glass culture dish next to a dime. The dime was about ten times the size of the bug.

  Harry noticed the waiter standing about ten feet away with two mugs of beer. The man held the mugs up and raised his eyebrows. Bosch signaled that it was safe to approach. The waiter put the glasses down, stole a glance at the bug photo and then moved quickly away. Harry slid the photo back to Teresa.

  "So what is it?"

  "Trypetid," she said, and she smiled.

  "Shoot, I was about to guess that," he said.

  She laughed at the lame joke.

  "It's a fruit fly, Harry. Mediterranean variety. The little bug that lays big waste to the California citrus industry. Salazar came to me to send it out on referral because we had no idea what it was. I had an investigator take it over to UCLA to an entomologist Gary suggested. He identified it for us."

  Gary, Bosch knew, was her estranged, soon to be ex-husband. He nodded at what she was telling him but was not seeing the significance of the find.

  She said, "We go on to the nasal swabs. Okay, there was more wheat dust and then we found this."

  She slid another photo across the table. This was also a photo of a culture dish with a dime in it. There was also a small pinkish-brown line near the dime. This was much smaller than the fly in the first photo, but Bosch could tell it was also some kind of insect.

  "And this?" he asked.

  "Same thing, my entomologist tells me. Only this is a youngun. This is a larva."

  She folded her fingers together and pointed her elbows out. She smiled and waited.

  "You love this, don't you?" he said. He drafted off a quarter of his beer. "Okay, you got me. What's it all mean?"

  "Well, you have a basic understanding of the fruit fly right? It chews up the citrus crop, can bring the entire industry to its knees, umpty-ump millions lost, no orange juice in the morning, et cetera, et cetera, the decline of civilization as we know it. Right?"

  He nodded and she went on, talking very quickly. "Okay, we seem to have an annual medfly infestation here. I'm sure you've seen the quarantine signs on the freeways or heard the helicopters spraying malathion at night."

  "They make me dream of Vietnam," Harry said.

  "You must have also seen or read about the movement against malathion spraying. Some people say it poisons people as well as these bugs. They want it stopped. So, what's a Department of Agriculture to do? Well, one thing is step up the other procedure they use to get these bugs.

  "The USDA and state Medfly Eradication Project release billions of sterile medflies all across southern California. Millions every week. See, the idea is that when the ones that are already out there mate, they'll do it with sterile partners and eventually the infestation will die out because less and less are reproduced. It's mathematical, Harry. End of problem�
�if they can saturate the region with enough sterile flies."

  She stopped there but Bosch still didn't get it.

  "Geez, this is all really fantastic, Teresa. But does it get to a point eventually or are we just—"

  "I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Just listen. You are a detective. Detectives are supposed to listen. You once told me that solving murders was getting people to talk and just listening to them. Well, I'm telling it."

  He held his hands up. She went on.

  "The flies released by the USDA are dyed when they are in the larval stage. Dyed pink, so they can keep track of them or quickly separate the sterile ones from the nonsterile ones when they check those little traps they have in orange trees all over the place. After the larvae are dyed pink, they are irradiated to make them sterile. Then they get released."

  Harry nodded. It was beginning to sound interesting.

  "My entomologist examined the two samples taken from Juan Doe #67 and this is what he found." She referred to some notes in the file. "The adult fly obtained from the deceased's stomach was both dyed and sterilized, female. Okay, nothing unusual about that. Like I said, they release something like three hundred million of these a week—billions over the year—and so it would seem probable that one might be accidentally swallowed by our man if he was anywhere in, say, southern California."

  "That narrows it down," Bosch said. "What about the other sample?"

  "The larva is different." She smiled again. "Dr. Braxton, that's the bug doctor, said the larval specimen was dyed pink as to USDA specifications. But it had not yet been irradiated—sterilized—when it went up our Juan Doe's nose."

  She unfolded her hands and put them down at her sides. Her factual report was concluded. Now it was time to speculate and she was giving him the first shot.

  "So inside his body he has two dyed flies; one sterilized and one not sterilized," Bosch said. "That would lead me to conclude that shortly before his death, our boy was at the location where these flies are sterilized. Millions of flies around. One or two could have gotten in his food. He could have breathed one in through the nose. Anything like that."

  She nodded.

  "What about the wheat dust? In the ears and hair."

  "The wheat dust is the food, Harry. Braxton said that is the food used in the breeding process."

  He said, "So I need to find where they make, where they breed, these sterile flies. They might have a line on Juan Doe. Sounds like he was a breeder or something."

  She smiled and said, "Why don't you ask me where they breed them."

  "Where do they do it, Teresa?"

  "Well, the trick is to breed them where they are already a part of the natural insect population or environment and therefore not a problem in case some happen to slip out the door before getting their dose of radiation.

  "And, so, the USDA contracts with breeders in only two places; Hawaii and Mexico. In Hawaii there are three breeding contractors on Oahu. In Mexico there is a breeder down near Zihuatenejo and the largest of all five is located near—"

  "Mexicali."

  "Harry! How did you know? Did you already know all of this and let me—"

  "It was just a guess. It fits with something else I've been working on."

  She looked at him oddly and for a moment he was sorry he had spoiled her fun. He drained his beer mug and looked around for the squeamish waiter.

  Ten

  SHE DROVE HIM BACK TO GET HIS CAR NEAR the Red Wind and then followed him out of downtown and up to his home in the hills. She lived in a condo in Hancock Park, which was closer, but she said she had been spending too much time there lately and wanted a chance to see or hear the coyote. He knew her real reason was that it would be easier for her to extricate herself from his place than to ask him to leave hers.

  Bosch didn't mind, though. The truth was, he felt uncomfortable at her place. It reminded him too much of what L.A. was coming to. It was a fifth-floor loft with a view of downtown in a historic residence building called the Warfield. The exterior of the building was still as beautiful as the day in 1911 it was completed by George Allan Hancock. Beaux Arts architecture with a blue-gray terracotta facade. George hadn't spared the oil money and from the street the Warfield, with its fleurs-de-lys and cartouches, showed it. But it was the interior—the current interior, that is—that Bosch found objectionable. The place had been bought a few years back by a Japanese firm and completely gutted, then retrofitted, renovated and revamped. The walls in each apartment were knocked down and each place was nothing but a long, sterile room with fake wood floors, stainless-steel counters and track lighting. Just a pretty shell, Bosch thought. He had a feeling George would've thought the same.

  At Harry's house they talked while he lit the hibachi on the porch and put an orange roughy filet on the grill. He had bought it Christmas Eve and it was still fresh and large enough to split. Teresa told him the County Commission would probably informally decide before New Year's on a permanent chief medical examiner. He wished her good luck but privately wasn't sure he meant it. It was a political appointment and she would have to toe the line. Why get into that box? He changed the subject.

  "So, if this guy, this Juan Doe, was down in Mexicali—near where they make these fruit flies—how do you think his body got all the way up here?"

  "That's not my department," Teresa said.

  She was at the railing, staring out over the Valley. There were a million lights glinting in the crisp, cool air. She was wearing his jacket over her shoulders. Harry glazed the fish with a pineapple barbecue sauce and then turned it over.

  "It's warm over here by the fire," he said. He dawdled a bit over the filet and then said, "I think what it was is that maybe they didn't want anybody checking around that USDA contractor's business. You know? They didn't want that body connected to that place. So they take the guy's body far away."

  "Yeah, but all the way to L.A.?"

  "Maybe they were . . . well, I don't know. That is pretty far away."

  They were both silent with their thoughts for a few moments. Bosch could hear and smell the pineapple sizzling as it dripped on the coals. He said, "How do you smuggle a dead body across the border?"

  "Oh, I think they've smuggled larger things than that across, don't you?"

  He nodded.

  "Ever been down there, Harry, to Mexicali?"

  "Just to drive through on my way to Bahia San Felipe, where I went fishing last summer. I never stopped. You?"

  "Never."

  "You know the name of the town just across the border? On our side?"

  "Uh uh."

  "Calexico."

  "You're kidding? Is that where—"

  "Yup."

  The fish was done. He forked it onto a plate, put the cover on the grill and they went inside. He served it with Spanish rice he made with Pico Pico. He opened a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses. Blood of the gods. He didn't have any white. As he put everything on the table he saw a smile on her face.

  "Thought I was a TV dinner guy, didn't you."

  "Crossed my mind. This is very nice."

  They clicked glasses and ate quietly. She complimented him on the meal but he knew the fish was a little too dry. They descended into small talk again. The whole time he was looking for the opening to ask her about the Moore autopsy. It didn't come until they were finished.

  "What will you do now?" she asked after putting her napkin on the table.

  "Guess I'll clear the table and see if—"

  "No. You know what I mean. About the Juan Doe case."

  "I'm not sure. I want to talk to Porter again. And I'll probably look up the USDA. I'd like to know more about how those flies get here from Mexico."

  She nodded and said, "Let me know if you want to talk to the entomologist. I can arrange that."

  He watched her as she once again got the far-off stare that had been intruding all night.

  "What about you?" he asked. "What will you do now?"

 
"About what?"

  "About the problems with the Moore autopsy."

  "That obvious, huh?"

  He got up and cleared the plates away. She didn't move from the table. He sat back down and emptied the bottle into the glasses. He decided he would have to give her something in order for her to feel comfortable giving him something in return.

  "Listen to me, Teresa. I think you and I should talk about things. I think we have two investigations, probably three investigations, here, that may all be part of the same thing. Like different spokes on the same wheel."

  She brought her eyes up, confused. "What cases? What are you talking about?"

  "I know that all of what I'm about to say is outside your venue but I think you need to know it to help make your decision. I've been watching you all night and I can tell you have a problem and don't know what to do."

  He hesitated, giving her a chance to stop him. She didn't. He told her about Marvin Dance's arrest and its relation to the Jimmy Kapps murder.

  "When I found out Kapps had been bringing ice over from Hawaii, I went to Cal Moore to ask about black ice. You know, the competition. I wanted to know where it comes from, where you get it, who's selling it, anything that would help me get a picture of who might've put down Jimmy Kapps. Anyway, the point is I thought Moore shined me on, said he knew nothing, but today I find out he was putting together a file on black ice. He was gathering string on my case. He held stuff back from me, but at the same time was putting something together on this when he disappeared. I got the file today. There was a note. It said 'Give to Harry Bosch' on it."

  "What was in it? The file."

  "A lot. Including an intelligence report, says the main source of black ice is probably a ranch down in Mexicali."

  She stared at him but said nothing.

  "Which brings us to our Juan Doe. Porter bails out and the case comes to me today. I am reading through the file and I'll give you one guess who it was that found the body and then disappeared the next day."

  "Shit," she said.

  "Exactly. Cal Moore. What this means I don't know. But he is the reporting officer on the body. The next day he is in the wind. The next week he is found in a motel room, a supposed suicide. And then the next day—after the discovery of Moore has been in the papers and on TV—Porter calls up and says, 'Guess what, guys, I quit.' Does all of this sound aboveboard to you?"