The Overlook

by Michael Connelly

  Brenner opened a door that had the number 1411 on it and stepped back for Bosch to enter. As he stepped through the door Bosch saw that it was a small, windowless interview room similar to the one he had spent time in that morning with Jesse Mitford. Bosch was suddenly shoved into the room from behind and he turned just in time to see Brenner out in the hallway pulling the door closed.

  “Hey!”

  Bosch grabbed for the doorknob but it was too late. The door was locked from the outside. He pounded twice on it but knew that Brenner was not about to open it. He turned away and looked at the small space he was confined in. Similar to those at the LAPD, the interview room contained only three items of furniture. A small square table and two chairs. Assuming there was a camera somewhere he raised his hand and shot his middle finger into the air. He gave his hand a twirl to emphasize the message.

  Bosch pulled one of the chairs out and sat down on it backwards, ready to wait them out. He took his cell phone out and opened it. He knew that if they were watching him they wouldn’t want him calling out and reporting his situation—it could be embarrassing for the bureau. But when he looked at the screen there was no signal. It was a safe room. Radio signals could not get out or in. Leave it to the feds, Bosch thought. They think of everything.

  A long twenty minutes went by and then the door finally opened. Rachel Walling stepped in. She closed the door, took the chair opposite Bosch and quietly sat down.

  “Sorry, Harry, I was over at Tactical.”

  “What the fuck, Rachel. You people hold cops against their will now?”

  She looked surprised.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What are you talking about?” Bosch repeated in a mocking voice. “Your partner locked me in here.”

  “It wasn’t locked when I came in. Try it now.”

  Bosch waved all the bullshit away.

  “Forget it. I don’t have time to play games. What’s going on with the investigation?”

  She pursed her lips as if considering how to respond.

  “What’s going on is that you and your department have been running around like thieves in a jewelry store, smashing every goddamn case in sight. You can’t tell the glass from the diamonds.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “So you know about Ramin Samir.”

  “Who doesn’t? It’s already on I-Missed-It News. What happened up there?”

  “A class-A fuckup is what happened. We were set up. OHS was set up.”

  “Sounds like somebody was.”

  Bosch leaned across the table.

  “But it means something, Rachel. The people who put the OHS onto Samir knew who he was and that he’d make an easy target. They left the Kents’ car right in front of his house because they knew we’d end up spinning our wheels.”

  “It also could have worked as a payback to Samir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All those years he was on CNN fanning the flames. He could’ve been seen as hurting their cause because he was giving the enemy a face and heightening American anger and resolve.”

  Bosch didn’t get it.

  “I thought agitation was one of their tools. I thought they loved this guy.”

  “Maybe. It’s hard to say.”

  Bosch wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. But when Rachel leaned across the table he suddenly could see how angry she was.

  “Now let’s talk about you and how you have been single-handedly fucking things up since before the car was even found.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m trying to solve a homicide. That’s my—”

  “Yes, trying to solve a homicide at the possible cost of endangering the entire city with this petty, selfish and self-righteous insistence on—”

  “Come on, Rachel, don’t you think I have an idea about what could be at stake here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Not if you are holding back a key witness from us. Don’t you see what you are doing? You have no idea where this investigation is headed because you’ve been busy hiding witnesses and sucker punching agents.”

  Bosch leaned back, clearly surprised.

  “Is that what Maxwell said, that I sucker punched him?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he said. We are trying to control a potentially devastating situation here and I don’t understand why you are making the moves you are making.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “That makes sense,” he said. “You shut somebody out of his own investigation and it stands to reason you won’t know what he is up to.”

  She held her hands up as if to stop an oncoming train.

  “Okay, let’s just stop everything right here. Talk to me, Harry. What is your problem?”

  Bosch looked at her and then up at the ceiling. He studied the upper corners of the room and dropped his eyes back to hers.

  “You want to talk? Let’s take a walk outside, then we can talk.”

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “Let’s walk and talk. And then you’ll give me Mitford.”

  Walling got up and moved to the door. Bosch saw her quickly glance up at an air-conditioning grille high on the back wall and it confirmed for him that they were on camera.

  She opened the unlocked door and Brenner and another agent were waiting in the hallway.

  “We’re going to take a little walk,” Walling said. “Alone.”

  “Have a great time,” Brenner said. “We’ll be in here trying to track the cesium, maybe save a few lives.”

  Walling and Bosch didn’t respond. She led him down the hall. Just as they were at the door to the elevator hall Bosch heard a voice from behind him.

  “Hey, buddy!”

  He turned just in time to take Agent Maxwell’s shoulder in the chest. He was driven into the wall and held up against it.

  “You’re a little outnumbered this time, aren’t you, Bosch!”

  “Stop!” Walling shouted. “Cliff, stop it!”

  Bosch brought his arm up around Maxwell’s head and was going to pull him down into a headlock. But Walling waded in and pulled Maxwell away and then pushed him back up the hallway.

  “Cliff, get back! Get away!”

  Maxwell started moving backwards up the hall. He pointed a finger over Walling’s shoulder at Bosch.

  “Get out of my building, motherfucker! Get out and stay out!”

  Walling shoved him into the first open office and then closed the door on him. By then several other agents had come into the hallway to see what the commotion was about.

  “It’s all over,” Walling announced. “Everybody just go back to work.”

  She came back to Bosch and pushed him through the door to the elevator.

  “You okay?”

  “Only hurts when I breathe.”

  “Son of a bitch! That guy is getting out of control.”

  They took the elevator down to the garage level and walked from there up an incline and out onto Los Angeles Street. She turned right and he caught up. They were heading away from the noise of the freeway. She checked her watch and then pointed toward an office building of modern design and construction.

  “There’s decent coffee in there,” she said. “But I don’t want to take a lot of time.”

  It was the new Social Security Administration building.

  “Another federal building,” Bosch sighed. “Agent Maxwell might think that’s his, too.”

  “Can you drop that, please?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m just surprised Maxwell even admitted we came back to the house.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “Because I figured he was posted on the house because he was already in the doghouse for being a fuckup. Why admit that we got the drop on him and have to stay in there longer?”

  Walling shook her head.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “First of all, Maxwell has been wound a little tight lately but no one in Tacti
cal Intelligence is in the doghouse. The work is too important to have any fuckups on the team. Secondly, he didn’t care what anyone would think. What he did think was that it was important for everyone to know about the way you’re fucking things up.”

  He tried another direction.

  “Let me ask you something. Do they know about you and me over there? Our history, I mean.”

  “It would be hard for them not to know after Echo Park. But, Harry, never mind all of that. That is not important today. What is wrong with you? We’ve got enough cesium out there to shut down an airport and you don’t seem all that concerned. You are looking at this like it’s a murder. Yes, a man is dead but that isn’t what this is about. It’s a heist, Harry. Get it? They wanted the cesium and now they’ve got it. And it would help us if maybe we could talk to the only known witness. So where is he?”

  “He’s safe. Where’s Alicia Kent? And where’s her husband’s partner?”

  “They’re safe. The partner is being questioned here and we’re keeping the wife at Tactical until we are sure we have everything there is to get from her.”

  “She’s not going to be very helpful. She couldn’t—”

  “That’s where you are wrong. She’s already been quite helpful.”

  Bosch couldn’t hold back the look of surprise in his eyes.

  “How? She said she didn’t even see their faces.”

  “She didn’t. But she heard a name. When they were speaking to each other, she heard a name.”

  “What name? She didn’t say this before.”

  Walling nodded.

  “And that is why you should turn over your witness. We have people who have one expertise: getting information from witnesses. We can get things that you are unable to get. We got them from her, we can get them from him.”

  Bosch felt his face turning red.

  “What was the name this master interrogator got from her?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’re not trading, Harry. This is a case involving national security. You’re on the outside. And by the way, that’s not going to change no matter who you get your police chief to call.”

  Bosch knew then that his meeting at the Donut Hole had been for nothing. Even the chief was on the outside looking in. Whatever name Alicia Kent gave up, it must have lit up the federal scoreboard like Times Square.

  “All I’ve got is my witness,” he said. “I’ll trade you straight up for the name.”

  “Why do you want the name? You’re not going to get anywhere near this guy.”

  “Because I want to know.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and thought about things for a moment. Finally, she looked at him.

  “You first,” she said.

  Bosch hesitated while he studied her eyes. Six months earlier he would have trusted her with his life. Now things had changed. Bosch wasn’t so sure.

  “I stashed him at my place,” he said. “I think you remember where that is.”

  She pulled a phone from her blazer pocket and opened it to make a call.

  “Wait a second there, Agent Walling,” he said. “What was the name Alicia Kent gave you?”

  “Sorry, Harry.”

  “We had a deal.”

  “National security, sorry.”

  She started punching in a number on her cell. Bosch nodded. He had called it right.

  “I lied,” he said. “He’s not at my place.”

  She slapped the phone closed.

  “What is with you?” she asked angrily, her voice getting shrill. “We’re running more than fourteen hours behind the cesium. Do you realize it may already be in a device? It may already be—”

  Bosch stepped in close to her.

  “Give me the name and I’ll give you the witness.”

  “All right!”

  She pushed him away. He knew she was angry with herself for being caught in the lie. It was the second time in less than twelve hours.

  “She said she heard the name Moby, okay? She didn’t think anything about it at the time because she didn’t realize it was actually a name she had heard.”

  “Okay, who is Moby?”

  “There is a Syrian terrorist named Momar Azim Nassar. He is believed to be in this country. He is known by friends and associates as Moby. We don’t know why, but he does happen to resemble the performer named Moby.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. Not your generation.”

  “But you are sure she heard this name?”

  “Yes. She gave us the name. And I have now given it to you. Now, where is the witness?”

  “Just hold on. You already lied to me once.”

  Bosch pulled out his phone and was about to call his partner when he remembered that Ferras would still be at the Silver Lake crime scene and be unable to provide what he needed. He opened the directory on the phone, found the number for Kiz Rider and pushed the call button.

  Rider answered immediately. Bosch’s number had showed up on caller ID.

  “Hello, Harry. You’ve been busy today.”

  “The chief tell you that?”

  “I’ve got a few sources. What’s up?”

  Bosch spoke while staring at Walling and watching the anger darken her eyes.

  “I need a favor from my old partner. You still carry that laptop with you to work?”

  “Of course. What favor?”

  “Can you get the New York Times archives on that computer?”

  “I can.”

  “All right. I have a name. I want you to check to see if it’s been in any stories.”

  “Hold on. I have to go online.”

  Several seconds went by. Bosch’s phone started to beep because he was getting another call. But he stayed with Rider and soon she was ready.

  “What’s the name?”

  Bosch put his hand over the phone and asked Walling the full name of the Syrian terrorist again. He then repeated it to Rider and waited.

  “Yeah, multiple hits,” she said. “Going back eight years.”

  “Give me a rundown.”

  Bosch waited.

  “Uh, just a bunch of stuff from the Middle East. He’s suspected of involvement in a number of abductions and bombings and so on. He’s connected to al Qaeda, according to federal sources.”

  “What’s the most recent story say?”

  “Uh, let’s see. It’s about a bus bombing in Beirut. Sixteen people killed. This is January third, two thousand four. Nothing after that.”

  “Does it give any nicknames or aliases?”

  “Um . . . no. I don’t see anything.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll call you later.”

  “Wait a minute. Harry?”

  “What? I have to go.”

  “Listen, I just want to tell you, be careful out there, okay? This is a whole different league you’re playing in with this.”

  “Okay, I got it,” Bosch said. “I gotta go.”

  Bosch ended the call and looked at Rachel.

  “There’s nothing in the New York Times about this guy being in this country.”

  “Because it’s not known. That is why Alicia Kent’s information was so genuine.”

  “What do you mean? You take her word for it that the guy’s in this country just because she heard a word that might not even be a name?”

  She folded her arms. She was losing her patience.

  “No, Harry, we know he’s in this country. We have video of him checking out the Port of Los Angeles last August. We just didn’t get there in time to grab him. We believe he was with another al Qaeda operative, named Muhammad El-Fayed. They’ve somehow slipped into this country—hell, the border’s a sieve—-and who knows what they’ve got planned.”

  “And you think they have the cesium?”

  “We don’t know that. But the intelligence on El-Fayed is that he smokes unfiltered Turkish cigarettes and—”

  “The ashes on the toilet.”

  She nodded.

  �
�That’s right. They’re still being analyzed but the betting in the office is running eight to one that it was a Turkish cigarette.”

  Bosch nodded and suddenly felt foolish about the moves he had been making, the information he had held back.

  “We put the witness in the Mark Twain Hotel on Wilcox,” he said. “Room three-oh-three under the name Stephen King.”

  “Cute.”

  “And, Rachel?”

  “What?”

  “He told us he heard the shooter call out to Allah before he pulled the trigger.”

  She looked at him with the eyes of judgment as she opened her phone again. She pushed a single button and spoke to Bosch while waiting for the connection.

  “You better hope we get to these people before—”

  She cut off when her call was picked up. She delivered the information without identifying herself or giving any sort of greeting.

  “He’s at the Mark Twain on Wilcox. Room three-oh-three. Go pick him up.”

  She closed her phone and looked at Bosch. Worse than judgment, he saw disappointment and dismissal in her eyes now.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I’d stay away from airports, subways and the malls until we find that cesium.”

  She turned and left him there. Bosch was watching her walk away when his phone started to buzz again and he answered without taking his eyes off her. It was Joe Felton, the deputy coroner.

  “Harry, I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “What’s up, Joe?”

  “We just swung by Queen of Angels to make a pickup—some gangbanger they pulled the plug on after a shooting yesterday in Hollywood.”

  Bosch remembered the case Jerry Edgar had mentioned.

  “Yeah?”

  Bosch knew that the medical examiner wouldn’t have called to waste his time. There was a reason.

  “So, we’re here now and I go into the break room to grab some caffeine and I overhear a couple of paramedics talking about a pickup that they just made. They said they just brought in a guy and the ER evaluation was ARS and it just made me wonder if it could be connected with the guy up on the overlook. You know, since he was wearing the radiation alert rings.”

  Bosch calmed his voice.

  “Joe, what is ARS?”

  “Acute radiation syndrome. The medics said they didn’t know what the guy had. He was burned and he was puking all over the place. They transported him and the ER doc said it was a pretty bad exposure, Harry. Now the medics are waiting to see if they’re exposed.”