The Drop hb-17

by Michael Connelly

  He looked directly down and saw the canopy the forensic team had put up. He also saw the body, on a gurney and covered in a blue blanket, being loaded into the coroner’s van.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Solomon said from behind him.

  “Yeah, what am I thinking?”

  “That he didn’t jump. That it was an accident.”

  Bosch didn’t respond.

  “But there are things to consider.”

  “What are they?”

  “The guy’s naked. The bed isn’t slept in and he didn’t check in with any luggage. He just checked into a hotel room in his own city without a suitcase. He asked for the top floor and a room with a balcony. He then goes up to his room, takes off his clothes, puts on the bathrobe they give you in a place like this and goes out on the balcony to contemplate the stars or something. He then takes off the bathrobe and falls face-fucking-first off the balcony by accident?”

  “And no scream,” Glanville added. “Nobody reported a scream—that’s why they didn’t find him till this morning. You don’t accidentally fall off a freakin’ balcony and not scream your lungs out.”

  “So maybe he wasn’t conscious,” Bosch suggested. “Maybe he wasn’t alone up here. Maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Oh, man, is that what this is about?” Solomon said. “The councilman wants a murder investigation and you’re sent out to make sure he gets it.”

  Bosch gave Solomon a look that let him know he was making a mistake suggesting Harry was carrying out Irving’s bidding.

  “Look, nothing personal,” Solomon said quickly. “I’m just saying we don’t see that angle at all here. Suicide note or not, this scene adds up to only one thing. A high dive.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. He noticed the fire escape ladder at the other end of the balcony. It led up to the roof and down to the balcony below on the sixth floor.

  “Anybody go up on the roof?”

  “Not yet,” Solomon said. “We were awaiting further instructions.”

  “What about the rest of the hotel? Did you knock on any doors?”

  “Same thing. Further instructions.”

  Solomon was being an ass but Bosch ignored it.

  “How did you confirm ID on the body? The facial damage was extensive.”

  “Yeah, this one’s going to be closed casket,” Glanville said. “That’s for sure.”

  “We got the name off the hotel registration and the plate on the car in valet,” Solomon said. “This was before we got the room safe open and found the wallet. We figured we better be sure and we better be quick. I had patrol send over the division’s MPR and got it off the guy’s thumb.”

  Each of the department’s divisions had a mobile print reader that took a digital thumbprint and instantly compared it to the Department of Motor Vehicles database. It was primarily used in the station house jails to confirm IDs, as there had been several incidents in which felons sought on warrants had given false IDs upon arrest and were able to bail out before the jailers knew they’d had a wanted individual in custody. But the department was always looking for other applications of the equipment and this had been a smart use of the new technology by Crate and Barrel.

  “Good going,” Bosch said.

  He turned and looked at the bathrobe.

  “Anybody check that?”

  Solomon and Glanville looked at each other and Bosch saw the exchange. Neither had checked, thinking the other had.

  Solomon went to the robe and Bosch stepped back into the suite. As he did so he spotted a small object next to a leg of the coffee table in front of the couch. He squatted down to see what it was without touching it. It was a small black button that had blended in with the dark pattern of the carpet.

  Bosch picked the button up so he could look closely at it. He guessed that it had come off a men’s dress shirt. He put the button back in the place he had found it. He could tell one of the detectives had come in from the balcony and was behind him.

  “Where are his clothes?”

  “Folded and hung nice and neat in the closet,” Glanville said. “What’s that?”

  “A button, probably nothing. But get the photographer back up here to shoot it before we collect it. Anything in the bathrobe?”

  “The room key. That’s it.”

  Bosch headed down the hallway. The first room on the right was a small kitchen with a table for two against one wall. On the counter opposite was a display of alcoholic beverages and snacks available for purchase by the suite’s guest. Bosch checked the waste can in the corner. It was empty. He opened the refrigerator and found it stocked with more beverages—beer, champagne, sodas and fruit drinks. None of it looked disturbed.

  Harry moved on down the hall, checking out the bathroom before finally entering the bedroom.

  Solomon had been right about the bed. The spread was neat and pulled tight at the corners. No one had even sat on the bed since it had been made. There was a closet with a mirrored door. As Bosch approached it he could see Glanville in the room’s doorway behind him, watching.

  In the closet, Irving’s clothes were on hangers—shirt, pants and jacket—and his underwear, socks and shoes were on a side shelf next to a room safe with a partially opened door. Inside the safe were a wallet and a wedding ring along with an iPhone and a watch.

  The safe had a four-digit combination lock. Solomon had said it was found closed and locked. Bosch knew that the hotel management most likely had an electronic reader that was used to unlock the room safes. People forget combinations or check out, forgetting they’ve locked the safe. The device quickly goes through the ten thousand possible combinations until it hits the winner.

  “What was the combination?”

  “To the safe? I don’t know. Maybe Jerry got it from her.”

  “Her?”

  “The assistant manager who opened it for us. Her name’s Tamara.”

  Bosch removed the phone from the safe. He had the same model himself. But when he tried to access it he found it was password protected.

  “What do you want to bet that the password he keyed into the safe is the same password on the phone?”

  Glanville didn’t answer. Bosch put the phone back into the safe.

  “We need to get somebody up here to bag this stuff.”

  “We?”

  Bosch smiled, though Glanville couldn’t see it. He slid the hangers apart and checked the pockets on the clothing. They were empty. He then started looking at the buttons on the shirt. It was a dark blue dress shirt with black buttons. He checked the rest of the shirt and found that the right cuff was missing a button.

  He felt Glanville come up and look over his shoulder.

  “I think it’s a match to the one out there on the floor,” Bosch said.

  “Yeah, what’s it mean?” Glanville said.

  Bosch turned around and looked at him.

  “I don’t know.”

  Before leaving the room, Bosch noticed that one of the bed’s side tables was askew. One corner had been pulled away from the wall and Bosch guessed it had been done when Irving unplugged the clock.

  “What do you think, that he took the clock out there to listen to music from his iPhone?” he asked without looking back at Glanville.

  “Could be but there’s another dock out there under the TV for that. Maybe he just didn’t see it.”

  “Maybe.”

  Bosch moved back out to the suite’s living room and Glanville followed. Chu was on his phone and Bosch gave him the cut it off sign. Chu put his hand over the phone and said, “I’m getting good stuff here.”

  “Yeah, well, get it later,” Bosch said. “We have things to do.”

  Chu got off the phone and the four detectives stood in a circle in the middle of the room.

  “Okay, this is how I want to do this,” Bosch began. “We’re going to knock on every door in this building. We ask what people heard, what they saw. We cover—”

  “Jesus Christ, what a waste of
time,” Solomon said, turning from the circle and looking out one of the windows.

  “We can leave no stone unturned,” Bosch said. “That way, if and when we call it suicide, nobody can second-guess us. Not the councilman, not the chief, not even the press. So the three of you split up the floors and start knocking on doors.”

  “People in here are all night crawlers,” Glanville said. “They’re still going to be sleeping.”

  “That’s good. That means we’ll get to them before they get out of the building.”

  “Okay, so we get to wake everybody up,” Solomon said. “What are you going to be doing?”

  “I’m going down to see the manager. I want a copy of the registration and the combination used to lock the room safe. I’ll see about cameras and after that I’ll check Irving’s car in the garage. You never know, maybe he left a note in the car. You two never checked it.”

  “We would’ve gotten to it,” Glanville said defensively.

  “Well, I’ll get to it now,” Bosch said.

  “The safe combo, Harry?” Chu asked. “What for?”

  “Because it might tell us whether it was Irving who punched it in.”

  Chu had a confused look on his face. Bosch decided he would explain it all later.

  “Chu, I also want you to climb that ladder out there and check the roof. Do that first, before you start knocking on doors.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was refreshing not to get a complaint. Bosch turned back to Crate and Barrel.

  “Now, here’s the part you two aren’t going to like.”

  “Oh, really?” Solomon said. “Imagine that.”

  Bosch walked over to the balcony doors, signaling them over. They stepped back out and Bosch pointed a finger and swept it across the vista of homes that terraced the hillside. Though on the seventh floor, he was level with numerous homes with windows facing the Chateau.

  “I want all of them canvassed,” he said. “Use patrol if they can spare the bodies, but I want all those doors knocked on. Somebody might have seen something.”

  “Don’t you think we would’ve heard from them?” Glanville said. “You see a guy jump off a balcony and I think you’re going to call it in.”

  Bosch glanced from the view to Glanville and then back out to the view.

  “Maybe they saw something before the drop. Maybe they saw him out here alone. Maybe he wasn’t alone. And maybe they saw him get thrown and they’re too scared to get involved. Too many maybes to let it go, Crate. It has to be done.”

  “He’s Crate. I’m Barrel.”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t tell the difference.”

  The disdain in Bosch’s voice was unmistakable.

  6

  After finally clearing the scene, they took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the hill to the San Fernando Valley. Along the way, Bosch and Chu traded reports on their efforts of the previous two hours, starting with the fact that the knocking on doors in the hotel had produced not a single guest who had heard or seen anything in regard to Irving’s death. Bosch found this surprising. He was sure that the sound of the impact of the body landing would have been loud, and yet no one in the hotel had reported hearing even that.

  “A waste of time,” Chu said.

  Which, of course, Bosch knew, was not the case. There was value in knowing that Irving had not shouted as he came down. This fact lent itself to the two scenarios Van Atta had mentioned; Irving had intentionally jumped or was unconscious when he was dropped.

  “It’s never a waste of time,” he said. “Did any of you knock on the doors of the pool bungalows?”

  “Not me. They’re all the way over on the other side of the building. I didn’t figure it was—”

  “What about Crate and Barrel?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Bosch pulled his phone. He called Solomon.

  “What’s your location?” he asked.

  “We’re on Marmont Lane, knocking on doors. Like we were told.”

  “Did you get anything out of the hotel?”

  “Nope, nobody heard nothing.”

  “Did you hit any of the bungalows?”

  There was a hesitation before Solomon answered.

  “Nope, we weren’t told to hit the bungalows, remember?”

  Bosch was annoyed.

  “I need you to go back and talk to a guest named Thomas Rapport in bungalow two.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s supposedly some kind of famous writer. He checked in right after Irving and might’ve talked to him.”

  “Let’s see, that’s about six hours or so before our guy jumped. And you want us to talk to a guy who was next in line to check in?”

  “That’s right. I’d do it myself but I need to get to Irving’s wife.”

  “Bungalow two, got it.”

  “Today. You can e-mail me the report.”

  Bosch closed the phone, annoyed with Solomon’s tone during the entire call. Chu immediately hit him with a question.

  “How’d you know about this guy Rapport?”

  Bosch reached into the side pocket of his suit coat and pulled free a clear plastic sleeve containing a DVD.

  “There are not a lot of cameras in that hotel. But there is one over the front desk. It’s got Irving checking in and the rest of the night right up until the body’s discovered. Rapport came in right after Irving. He might’ve even ridden up in the elevator from the garage with him.”

  “Did you look at the disc?”

  “Just the part with him checking in. I’ll watch the rest later.”

  “Anything else from the manager?”

  “The hotel call logs and the combination that was entered on the room safe.”

  Bosch told him the combination on the room safe was 1492 and that it was not a default number. Whoever had locked Irving’s possessions in the safe had keyed the number in either randomly or intentionally.

  “Christopher Columbus,” Chu said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Harry, I’m the foreigner. Don’t you know your history lessons? ‘In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue’—remember?”

  “Yeah, sure. Columbus. But what’s it have to do with this?”

  It seemed like a stretch to Bosch that the discovery of America was the inspiration for the combination.

  “And that’s not even the oldest date connected to this thing,” Chu added excitedly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The hotel, Harry. The Chateau Marmont is a duplicate of a French chateau built in the thirteenth century in the Loire Valley.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “I looked it up on Google. That’s what I was doing on my phone. Turns out that back then, the average height of Western Europeans was five foot three. So if they copied that place, that would explain why the balcony walls are so short.”

  “The balustrades. But what’s that got to—”

  “Accidental death, Harry. The guy comes out on the balcony to get some fresh air or something and goes right over the balcony. Do you know that Jim Morrison, that guy from the Doors, fell off a balcony there like that in nineteen seventy?”

  “That’s great. What about a little more recently, Chu? Are you saying they have a—”

  “No, there’s no history there. I’m just saying . . . you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if we have to make this an accident so the chief and the powers that be are happy, then there’s our way to it.”

  They had just crested the mountain and crossed Mulholland. They were now dropping down into Studio City, where George Irving had lived with his family. At the next street, Bosch jerked the wheel and pulled into Dona Pegita and stopped. He slammed the car into park and turned in his seat to confront his partner.

  “What gave you the idea that we’re looking to appease the powers that be?”

  Chu im
mediately became flustered.

  “Well . . . I don’t . . . I’m just saying if we want—look, Harry, I’m not saying what happened. It’s just a possibility.”

  “Possibility, my ass. He either checked in because he wanted to check out, or somebody drew him there, knocked him out and then dropped him. There was no accident and I’m not looking for anything but what really happened. If this guy offed himself, then he offed himself and the councilman has to live with it.”

  “Okay, Harry.”

  “I don’t want to hear about the Loire Valley or the Doors or anything else that is a distraction. There’s a good chance it wasn’t this guy’s idea to end up on the sidewalk at the Chateau Marmont. Right now it could go either way. And all politics aside, I’m going to find out.”

  “I hear you, Harry. I didn’t mean anything, okay? I was just trying to help. Casting a big net. Remember, you told me that’s how it’s done.”

  “Sure.”

  Bosch turned forward again and dropped the car into drive. He made a U-turn and headed back to Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Chu desperately tried to change the subject.

  “Was there anything on the call logs worth looking at?”

  “No calls coming in. Irving called down to the garage about midnight and that was it.”

  “What was that about?”

  “We have to talk to the midnight man—he got out of there before we could hold him. They keep a log in the office down there and it says Irving called to ask him to see if he left his phone in his car. We found the phone in the safe, so either Irving was mistaken or the phone was left in the car and brought up to his room.”

  They were silent for a moment as they considered the call to the garage. Finally, Chu spoke.

  “Did you check out the car?”

  “I did. There was nothing there.”

  “Damn. I guess that would have made it easier, if there had been a note or something.”

  “Yeah. But there wasn’t.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah, too bad.”

  They rode the rest of the way to George Irving’s home in silence.

  When they got to the address that was on their victim’s driver’s license, Bosch saw a familiar Lincoln Town Car parked at the curb. The same two men were in the front. It meant Councilman Irving was on the premises. Bosch got ready for another face-to-face with the enemy.