The Closers (2005)

by Michael Connelly

  "Sounds like a good idea," Bosch said. "But first why don't you run this guy through DMV and NCIC and see if we can get a location?"

  "Already did that."

  She turned her laptop around on her desk so Bosch could see the screen. He recognized the National Crime Index Computer template on the screen. He reached across and started scrolling down the screen, his eyes scanning the information.

  Rider had run Roland Mackey through NCIC and gotten his criminal record. His conviction two years earlier for lewd behavior was only the latest in a string of recorded arrests dating back to when he was eighteen-the same year as Rebecca Verloren's murder. Anything prior would not be listed because juvenile protection laws shielded that part of his record. Most of the crimes listed were property and drug-related crimes, beginning with car theft and a burglary at eighteen and leading to two drug-possession raps, two driving under the influence arrests, another burglary charge and a receiving stolen property hit. There was also an early solicitation of prostitution arrest. Overall it was the pedigree of a small-time criminal and drug user. It appeared that Mackey never went to state prison for any of his crimes. He was often given second chances and then, through plea agreements, was sentenced to probation or to short stints in county jail. It appeared that the longest he ever stayed in stir was six months served after pleading guilty to receiving stolen property when he was twenty-eight years old. He served his time at the county-run Wayside Honor Rancho.

  Bosch leaned back after he was finished scrolling through the computer records. He felt uneasy about what he had just read. Mackey had the kind of record that might be seen as a pathway to murder. But in this case the murder came first-when Mackey was only eighteen years old-and the petty crimes came after. It didn't seem to quite fit.

  "What?" Rider asked, sensing his mood.

  "I don't know. I thought there'd be more, I guess. It's backwards. This guy goes from murder to petty crime? Doesn't seem to hold."

  "Well, this is all he's ever gotten popped for. Doesn't mean it's all he ever did."

  He nodded.

  "Juvenile?" he asked.

  "Maybe. Probably. But we'll never get those records now. They're probably long gone."

  It was true. The state went out of its way to protect the privacy of juvenile offenders. Crimes rarely tailed offenders into the adult justice system. Nevertheless, Bosch thought that there had to be childhood crimes that would fit better with the seemingly cold-blooded murder of a sixteen-year-old girl who had been incapacitated with a stun gun and abducted from her home. Bosch began to have an uneasy feeling about the cold hit they were working. He was beginning to sense that Mackey was not the target. He was a means to the target.

  "Did you run him through DMV for an address?" he asked.

  "Harry, that's old-school. You only have to update your driver's license every four years. You want to find somebody you go to AutoTrack."

  She opened the murder book and slid a loose piece of paper across to him. It was a computer printout that said AutoTrack at the top. Rider said it was a private company the police department contracted with. It provided computer searches of all public records, including DMV, public utility and cable service databases, as well as private databases such as credit reporting services, to determine an individual's past and current addresses. Bosch saw that the printout contained a listing of Roland Mackey's various addresses dating back to when he was eighteen. His current listing on all current data, including driver's license and car registration, was the address in Panorama City. But on the page, Rider had circled the address ascribed to Mackey when he was eighteen through twenty years old-the years 1988 through 1990. It was an apartment on Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Chatsworth. This meant that at the time of the murder Mackey was living very close to Rebecca Verloren's home. This made Bosch feel a little better about things. Proximity was a key piece to the puzzle. Bosch's misgivings over Mackey's criminal pedigree aside, knowing that he was in the immediate vicinity in 1988 and therefore could have seen or even known Rebecca Verloren was a large check mark in the positive column.

  "Make you feel any better, Harry?"

  "A little bit."

  "Good. I'm going, then."

  "I'll be here."

  After Rider left, Bosch jumped back into his review of the murder book. The third Investigator's Summary focused on how the intruder got into the house. The door and window locks showed no signs of having been compromised and all known keys to the home were accounted for among family members and a housekeeper who was cleared of any suspicion. The investigators theorized that the killer came in through the garage, which had been left open, and then entered the house through the connecting door, which was usually not locked until after Robert Verloren came home from work at night.

  According to Robert Verloren the garage was open when he came home from his restaurant about ten-thirty on the night of July fifth. The connecting door from the garage into the house was unlocked. He entered his home, closed the garage and locked the connecting door. The investigators theorized that by then the killer was already in the house.

  The Verlorens' explanation for the open garage was that their daughter had recently received her driver's license and was on occasion allowed to use her mother's car. However, she had not yet acquired the habit of remembering to close the garage door upon leaving or coming home, and had been chastised by her parents on more than one occasion for this. Late in the afternoon before her abduction Rebecca was sent on an errand by her mother to pick up dry cleaning. She used her mother's car. The investigators confirmed that she picked up the clothing at 5:15 p.m. and then returned home. It was believed by the investigators that she once again forgot to close the garage or lock the connecting door after returning. Her mother said she never checked the garage that night, assuming wrongly that it was closed.

  Two residents in the neighborhood canvassed after the murder reported seeing the garage door open that evening. This left the house easily accessible until Robert Verloren came home.

  Bosch thought about how many times over the years he had seen someone's seemingly innocent mistake turn into one of the keys to their own doom. A routine chore to pick up clothes may have led to the opportunity for a killer to get inside the house. Becky Verloren may have unwittingly engineered her own death.

  Bosch pushed his chair back and stood up. He had finished the review of the first half of the murder book. He decided to get another cup of coffee before taking on the second half. He asked around in the office if anybody needed anything from the cafeteria and got one order for coffee from Jean Nord. He took the stairs down to the cafeteria and filled two cups from the urn, then paid for them and went over to the condiments counter to get Nord's cream and sugar. While he was pouring a shot of cream into one of the cups he felt a presence next to him at the counter. He made room at the station but no one reached for any condiments. He turned toward the presence and found himself looking at the smiling face of Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.

  There had never been any love lost between Bosch and Deputy Chief Irving. The chief had at various times been his adversary and unwitting savior in the department. But Bosch had heard from Rider that Irving was on the outs now. He had been unceremoniously pushed out of power by the new chief and given a virtually meaningless posting and assignment outside of Parker Center.

  "I thought that was you, Detective Bosch. I'd buy you a cup of coffee but I see you already have more than enough. Would you like to sit down for a minute anyway?"

  Bosch held up both cups of coffee.

  "I'm kind of in the middle of something, Chief. And somebody's waiting for one of these."

  "One minute, Detective," Irving said, a stern tone entering his voice. "The coffee will still be hot when you get to where you have to go. I promise."

  Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked to a nearby table. Bosch followed. Irving still had a shaved and gleaming skull. His muscular jaw was his most prominent feature. He took a seat and held
his posture ramrod straight. He didn't look comfortable. He didn't speak until Bosch sat down. The pleasant tone was back in his voice.

  "All I wanted to do was welcome you back to the department," he said.

  He smiled like a shark. Bosch hesitated like a man stepping across a trapdoor before answering.

  "It's good to be back, Chief."

  "The Open-Unsolved Unit. I think that is the appropriate place for someone of your skills."

  Bosch took a sip from his scalding cup of coffee. He didn't know if Irving had just complimented or insulted him. He wanted to leave.

  "Well, we'll see," he said. "I hope so. I think I better -"

  Irving held his hands out wide, as if to show he wasn't hiding anything.

  "That's it," he said. "You can go. I just wanted to say welcome back. And to thank you."

  Bosch hesitated, but then bit.

  "Thank me for what, Chief?"

  "For resurrecting me in this department."

  Bosch shook his head and smiled as if he didn't understand.

  "I don't get it, Chief," he said. "How am I supposed to do that? I mean, you're across the street in the City Hall Annex now, right? What is it, the Office of Strategic Planning or something? From what I hear, you get to leave your gun at home."

  Irving folded his arms on the table and leaned in close to Bosch. All pretense of humor, false or otherwise, evaporated. He spoke strongly but quietly.

  "Yes, that is where I am. But I guarantee you that it will not be for long. Not with the likes of you being welcomed back into the department."

  He then leaned back and just as quickly adopted a casual manner for what he delivered as casual conversation.

  "You know what you are, Bosch? You are a retread. This new chief likes putting retreads on the car. But you know what happens with a retread? It comes apart at the seams. The friction and the heat-they're too much for it. It comes apart and what happens? A blowout. And then the car goes off the road."

  He nodded silently as he let Bosch think about that.

  "You see, Bosch, you are my ticket. You will fuck up-if you will excuse my language. It is in your history. It is in your nature. It is guaranteed. And when you fuck up, our illustrious new chief fucks up for being the one who put a cheap retread on our car."

  He smiled. Bosch thought that all he needed was a gold earring to complete the picture. Mr. Clean all the way.

  "And when he goes down my stock goes right back up. I'm a patient man. I've waited for over forty years in this department. I can wait longer."

  Bosch expected more but that was it. Irving nodded once and stood up. He quickly turned and headed out of the cafeteria. Bosch felt the anger rise in his throat. He looked down at the two cups of coffee in his hands and felt like an idiot for having sat there like a defenseless errand boy while Irving had verbally punched him out. He got up and threw both cups into a trash can. He decided that when he got back to room 503 he would tell Jean Nord to get her own damn coffee.

  6

  WITH THE UNEASE of the Irving confrontation still lingering, Bosch took the second half of the murder book over to his desk and sat down. He thought the best way to forget about the threat that Irving posed was to immerse himself in the case again. What he found left in the file was a thick sheaf of ancillary reports and updates, the things investigators always lumped into the back of the book, the reports that Bosch called the tumblers because they often seemed disparate but nevertheless could unlock a case when seen from the right angle or put together in the right pattern.

  First was a lab report stating that testing was unable to determine exactly how long the blood and tissue sample taken from the murder weapon could have been in the gun. The report said that while most of the sample was preserved for comparison purposes, an examination of selected blood cells indicated decomposition was not extensive. The criminalist who wrote the report could not say the blood was deposited on the gun at the time of the killing-no one could. But he would be prepared to testify that the blood was deposited on the gun "close to or at the time of the killing."

  Bosch knew this was a key report in terms of mounting a prosecution of Roland Mackey. It might also give Mackey the opportunity to build a defense around having had possession of the gun before the murder but not at the time of the murder. It would be a risky move to admit being in possession of the murder weapon, but the DNA match dictated that it was a move he would likely have to make. With the science unable to pinpoint exactly when the deposit of blood and tissue on the gun occurred, Bosch saw a gaping hole in the prosecution's case. The defense could clearly jump through it. Again, he felt the certainty of the cold hit DNA match slipping away. Science gives and takes at the same time. They needed more.

  Next in the murder book was a report from the Firearms Unit, which had been assigned the ownership trace of the murder weapon. The serial number on the Colt had been filed down, but the number was raised in the lab with the application of an acid which accentuated the compressions in the metal where the number had been stamped during manufacture. The number was traced to a gun purchased from the manufacturer in 1987 by a Northridge gun shop. It was then traced through its sale that year to a man who lived in Chatsworth on Winnetka Avenue. The gun had then been reported stolen by the owner when his home was burglarized June 2, 1988, just a month before it was used in the murder of Rebecca Verloren.

  This report helped their case somewhat because unless Mackey had a relationship with the gun's original owner, the burglary compressed the time period during which Mackey would have had possession of the gun. It made it more likely that he had the gun on the night Becky Verloren was taken from her home and murdered.

  The original burglary report was contained in the file. The victim was named Sam Weiss. He lived alone and worked as a sound technician at Warner Bros. in Burbank. Bosch scanned the report and found only one other note of interest. In the investigating officer's comments section it was stated that the burglary victim had recently purchased the gun for protection after being harassed by anonymous phone calls in which the caller threatened him because he was Jewish. The victim reported that he did not know how his unlisted number fell into the hands of his harasser and he did not know what had brought on the threats.

  Bosch quickly read through the next report from the Firearms Unit, which identified the stun gun used in the abduction. The report said the 2-1/4-inch span between contact points-as exhibited by the burn marks on the victim's flesh-was unique to the Professional 100 model manufactured by a company called SafetyCharge in Downey. The model was sold over the counter and through mail order and there were more than twelve thousand Professional 100 models distributed at the time of the murder. Bosch knew that without the actual device in hand there was no way to connect the marks on Becky Verloren's body with an ownership trail. That was a dead end.

  He moved on, leafing through a series of 8 x 10 photos taken in the Verloren house after the body was found up on the hillside behind it. Bosch knew these were cover-your-ass photos. The case had been handled-or mishandled-as a runaway situation. The department did not go full field with it until after the body was found and an autopsy concluded the death was a homicide. Five days after the girl was reported missing, the police came back and turned the house into a crime scene. The question was what was lost in those five days.

  The photos included interior and exterior shots of all three doors to the house-front, back, garage-and several close-ups of window locks. There was also a series of shots taken in Becky Verloren's bedroom. The first thing Bosch noticed was that the bed was made. He wondered if the abductor had made it, thereby further selling the suicide, or Becky's mother had simply made the bed at some point during the days she hoped and waited for her daughter to come home.

  The bed was a four-poster with a white-and-pink spread with cats on it and a matching pink ruffle. The bedspread reminded Bosch of the one that had covered his own daughter's bed. It seemed to be something that a child much younger than sixteen
would like and he wondered if Becky Verloren had kept it for nostalgic reasons or as some sort of psychological security blanket. The bed's ruffle did not uniformly skirt the floor. It was a couple inches too long, and so it bunched on the floor and alternately fluffed out or tucked under the bed too far.

  There were photos of her bureau and bed tables. The room was festooned with stuffed animals from her younger years. There were posters on the walls from music groups that had come and gone. There was a poster of a John Travolta movie three comebacks old. The room was very neat and orderly, and again Bosch wondered if this was how it had been on the morning Rebecca Verloren was discovered missing or if her mother had straightened the room while awaiting her daughter's return.

  Bosch knew the photos had to have been taken as the first step of the crime scene investigation. Nowhere did he see any fingerprint powder or any other indication of the upset that would come with the intrusion of the criminalists.

  The photos were followed in the murder book by a packet of summaries from interviews the detectives conducted with numerous students at Hillside Prep. A checklist on the top page indicated that the investigators had talked to every student in Becky Verloren's class and every boy who attended the upper grades of the school. There were also summaries from interviews of several of the victim's teachers and school administrators.