The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly

  “You got the day pass, stay as long as you like.”

  “I’ve been here before, you know. About ten or twelve years ago. I came with Brouss back when he opened it, and I got a hog. I thought maybe the picture would be up here somewhere.”

  “That goes back a ways. Those photos—if there are any left—

  are over there on the other side of the door.”

  “Okay.”

  Bosch moved over to the area on the right side of the door and started looking.

  “There’s not too much from back then,” the man said. “Mr. Broussard took a lot of the photos with him when he sold the place. He took every picture with Dave in it off the wall. Didn’t want the reminder up, I guess.”

  Bosch kept his eyes on the photos and his voice casual.

  “A reminder of what?”

  “The accident. That’s why he sold the place. He didn’t want to be reminded.”

  Now Bosch turned from the wall of photos and looked at the man.

  “What kind of accident was it?”

  The man eyed him for a long moment before answering.

  “No need to pick at scabs around here. Mr. Broussard sold the place to me and we’ve had no problems since I took it over. Enough said right there.”

  “Sorry. My daughter says I shouldn’t be so nosy.”

  “She’s a smart girl, you ask me. And a hell of a shot—I was watching.”

  “She sure is.”

  23

  Bosch got to the squad room at seven Monday morning and found Soto already at her desk. He noticed that she was wearing the same clothes as the day before.

  “You were here all night?”

  “I was working on the nexus and lost track of time. I slept a few hours downstairs. Not worth going home and back.”

  Bosch nodded. There was a cot room down on the garage level available on a first-come first-served basis. The room was open to male and female officers but he didn’t think he had ever heard of a female officer making use of it. He was continuing to be amazed by Soto’s commitment to the cases and the job.

  “‘Nexus’?” he asked.

  “That’s what I’m calling this search for a connection between the EZBank three and the Bonnie Brae apartments,” she said.

  “You get anything?”

  “Not yet. But I’m only halfway through the tenants list. I’ll hopefully finish today.”

  Bosch dropped his files on his desk and sat down heavily in his chair. Soto read his body language.

  “What’s up with you?”

  Bosch shook his head and pulled a folded piece of paper out of one of the files. He handed it to her. It was a printout of a story from the Riverside Press-Enterprise dated March 23, 2005. It was a brief story and Soto quickly read it.

  “What does this mean?” she asked.

  “I think it means Broussard covered his tracks,” he said. “We’re not going to get him.”

  “I don’t understand. There are no names in this. This was an accidental shooting?”

  “According to that story. I’ll pull the Riverside sheriff’s file on it today.”

  “Where did this come from?”

  “Yesterday I went to the range Broussard used to own out there. I did some shooting with my daughter. The guy who owns and runs the place mentioned that he got it from Broussard after the accident.”

  Bosch nodded at the printout in her hand.

  “My kid found that in the newspaper’s digital archives. No names, but the guy who ran the range for Broussard was killed in a hunting accident. The headline says ‘Hunter Kills Best Friend in Accidental Shooting.’ What do you want to bet that when I get the file, the hunter is Broussard?”

  “There were no other stories after this one?”

  “That’s another thing. No other stories after that little brief. You ask me, somebody with some juice put a stopper on this.”

  Soto nodded as she was taking it all in.

  “So why are you so sure we can’t get to Broussard?”

  Bosch held his hands out wide.

  “Well, if we assume that whoever took the shot at Mariachi Plaza came out of that range in Riverside, then it was probably either set up by the guy who ran the place or he was the one who took the shot. Either way, he was the connection to Broussard and now that connection is gone. He’s been dead for nine years.”

  He pointed to the printout again as if that proved his words.

  “There’s gotta be . . . ,” Soto began. “We still have Ojeda.”

  “He’s not enough,” Bosch said. “No DA would touch this with what we’ve got. We’d get laughed out of the CCB. We’ve got no evidence. No gun, no direct witness, no—”

  Bosch stopped as he thought of something.

  “What?” Soto asked.

  “It’s slim,” he said. “But when I get the name of the guy who ran the range—the guy working there yesterday called him Dave—I’ll run his name through the ATF computer. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out he owned a Kimber Montana. It won’t be enough to get us in the door at the D.A.’s Office but it will be another piece.”

  He took the page back from Soto and turned to his desk. He thought about first moves. Making an inquiry at another law enforcement agency was a delicate matter, especially when it was one so close to L.A. There were invariably connections and relationships between the two—a cross-pollination of personnel that could cause difficulty for the unwitting caller. It was always better to make an entrance through a known entity—a lateral rather than direct approach.

  Bosch had several contacts to choose from. Over the last few years that he worked in the Open-Unsolved Unit, there had been a number of cases with ties to Riverside County, and he had slowly filled the space in his mental Rolodex behind the R card. He decided to try Steve Bennett, who was a missing-persons investigator with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Bosch wasn’t calling about a missing person but he knew Bennett had been with the department a long time, had worked in several different capacities as an investigator, and would know where and how to look for what Bosch needed.

  After an exchange of long-time-no-sees and other pleasantries, Bosch asked Bennett if he could find out about the fatal accident that occurred nine years before at the White Tail Hunting Ranch. Having been given the exact date of the shooting, Bennett said he didn’t think it would take him long to pull up a record and check the lay of the land. He told Bosch he would call back when he had something. Bosch in turn asked him to keep his inquiries below the surface. Nobody else needed to know.

  Bosch ended the call and told Soto he was going to walk over to the Starbucks a block down 1st Street. It was Monday and he was going to start the week off with something other than what came out of the machine in the PAB lobby.

  “You know it all comes out of a machine, Harry,” Soto responded. “A brewer. Some places are just fancier than others.”

  “True,” Bosch said. “But every now and then I like the human touch that comes with handcrafted coffee.”

  It was a line he borrowed from his daughter. Soto gave no reaction.

  “So you want anything or not?”

  “No, I’m good. I went down there about an hour ago for the human touch.”

  “Right.”

  Bosch left the building and was halfway to the coffee shop when his cell buzzed. It was Bennett with the callback from Riverside County.

  “Harry, I don’t have a lot,” he said. “They closed this thing up pretty quick. A real tragedy, it looks like. A guy killed his best friend when he mistook him for a deer or a hog or something in the brush out there.”

  Bosch walked over to a bench in a bus stop shelter so he could sit down, hold the phone in the crook of his neck, and take some notes.

  “Okay,” he said. “You have the names of the shooter and victim?”

  “The shooter was Charles Andrew Broussard. That’s bravo-romeo—”

  “I got that spelling. What’s the vic’s name?”

  �
��David Alexander Willman. Common spelling on all if you don’t have it. Age forty-two. He was the manager of the ranch and Broussard was the owner. Says here they were best friends since high school, growing up in Hemet. They were hunting and got separated in something called the ‘hog chute’—spelled C-H-U-T-E—which is described here as a narrow canyon on the ranch, and somehow Willman showed up where Broussard didn’t think he was going to be. Broussard thought it was a hog they were tracking and hit him from thirty yards. Through-and-through neck wound. Willman died at the scene. Bled out.”

  Bosch jotted down a few words that would prompt his memory of the summary.

  “What was Broussard shooting?” he asked.

  “Uh, let’s see here . . . an Encore Pro Hunter,” Bennett said. “It was a .308.”

  “And what about Willman? Does it say what he was carrying?”

  “Uh . . . nothing here about what he had, Harry.”

  “Okay, any inventory on the report?”

  “Just Broussard’s gun.”

  It had been a faint hope—that Willman’s rifle would be listed or even held in evidence.

  “Who was the investigator?” he asked.

  “Bill Templeton,” Bennett said. “He’s still with the department. He’s a captain now.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know him but I don’t really know him. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bosch had to think for a moment as he phrased the next question. A bus pulled up to the curb and he had to get up and walk away from the shelter to escape the noise.

  “You out on the street, Harry?” Bennett asked.

  “Yeah, getting coffee,” Bosch said. “Listen, Steve, did you know of Templeton as an investigator? I’m wondering if he was the kind of guy that would close a case quick because he was lazy about it, or if he was the kind that could be encouraged to close a case.”

  There was a long silence before Bennett answered.

  “Hard to tell from this report and I never worked directly with the guy. But I heard Templeton is a golfer, and before every shot, he throws a little grass up into the air to see which way the wind blows.”

  Bosch understood the meaning. Templeton might not have been resistant to encouragement to close the accident investigation quickly, especially if it came from above.

  “Harry, you want the OSHA report number?” Bennett asked. “The report isn’t here but they must have signed off on it. I have a number.”

  Bosch returned to the bus bench so he could take down the number. He also asked for Willman’s birth date and home address along with the identifiers of his wife, Audrey. He then thanked Bennett for his quick help.

  “Keep that golf thing to yourself, okay?” Bennett said. “Don’t need Templeton on my ass.”

  “Of course,” Bosch said. “I owe you one.”

  After disconnecting the call Bosch turned around and headed back to the PAB without completing the coffee run. He no longer needed the caffeine burst.

  Back at his computer Bosch ran David Alexander Willman through the crime databases and drew a blank. Willman had a clean record as far as Bosch could determine.

  He next opened up the ATF gun registration site and ran a search on Willman. Even though Willman was deceased, the database would carry any gun transactions he had legally made. This time Bosch got results. Willman was listed as a gun dealer whose federal license lapsed six years before, when it was not renewed after his death.

  Bosch guessed that being a gun dealer went hand in hand with operating a hunting ranch and gun range. The ATF search also pulled up a number of transactions in the eight years before his death. Willman had bought and sold dozens of guns. Bosch combed through the list and found the purchases of two different Kimber Model 84 rifles. Willman had bought them in 2000 and 2002, long before Orlando Merced had been shot with such a weapon.

  Harry then went through Willman’s sales reports and found only one of the two rifles had been resold. It meant that at the time of his death Willman owned a Kimber Montana. It didn’t mean he was in possession of the weapon, but it was registered in his name.

  Regardless, Bosch was now encouraged. He thought he might have a line on the murder weapon. It had been nine years since Willman died. The rifle could have long disappeared. If Willman didn’t dump it right after the Merced shooting, then Broussard probably got rid of it after he killed Willman. All of this was mere conjecture, Bosch knew, but he had to acknowledge that there was a chance Willman had been smart and had hung on to the rifle as leverage with his friend Broussard. He could have said he got rid of it but in reality kept it hidden somewhere just in case things went sideways.

  Bosch wrote the serial number of the rifle down in his notebook and then started a new computer search, this time looking at Riverside County property records. When he got what he needed he turned to Soto.

  “I’m going back out to Riverside,” he said.

  She turned from her computer to look at him.

  “What’s out there?”

  “I got a callback. Broussard was the shooter out there that day. Killed his friend David Willman and it was ruled an accident. But Willman was a gun dealer and bought a Kimber Montana he never sold. It might be out there.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve got the address where Willman lived but his wife sold it two years after his death and traded up. She’s in Rancho Mirage. I was thinking I’d start there. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she still has the gun.”

  Soto thought about it for a moment and then said, “I’m going with you.”

  “What about the nexus?”

  “It can wait. You’re not going out there looking for a gun without your partner.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “You like chili rice?” he asked. “I know a good place to stop about halfway out.”

  24

  The drive out took much longer than the Sunday drive Bosch had shared with his daughter. For one thing the freeways were more crowded and Rancho Mirage was almost an hour farther east into the Coachella Valley. He and Soto discussed both cases they were actively working and the moves they planned to make. Bosch’s belief that the rifle used to shoot Orlando Merced might still be in the hands of David Willman’s family was a valid investigative string to follow but it didn’t approach the threshold for a search warrant for the Willman family home. He and Soto would have to knock on the door and hope for cooperation or something that would bolster probable cause.

  They stopped in West Covina for an early lunch of chili rice and then conversation tapered off as they made the second half of the drive. Bosch’s thoughts drifted from the case to the dinner he’d had with Virginia Skinner the night before. The conversation had been good and interesting. The door to romance even cracked open—at least from Bosch’s perspective—and it was exciting to think about where it might go. It wasn’t just the prospect of being with someone again. Bosch had to admit that his chances at perhaps a final romance in his life were dwindling as time went by. His hopes that Hannah Stone might be that final romance were dashed the year before. Her son was in prison on a date-rape conviction. When Bosch refused to go to bat for him at a scheduled parole hearing, Hannah abruptly ended the relationship, leaving Bosch to wonder if her motives had been wrapped around her son’s situation all along.

  Thinking about Virginia Skinner, Bosch realized that there was a secret thrill in the possibility of a relationship because of her standing in the media. A romance with a reporter would be so fraught with complications that it was obviously ill-advised, and in that risk was the thrill. Whatever they did, it would have to be kept secret. In the Department it would be seen as tantamount to sleeping with the enemy. The PAB and the Los Angeles Times were only separated by the four lanes of Spring Street but there was an invisible wall between the two institutions that was twice as tall as City Hall. Bosch would have to be very careful if he proceeded. Virginia Skinner would as well.

  “You taught your da
ughter to shoot?”

  Soto had asked the question, pulling Bosch out of his thoughts. She had obviously been ruminating on his report of his Sunday afternoon activities.

  “Uh, yeah, I did.”

  “That’s a bit unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Well, you know, guns in the house and all of that. I wanted her to learn about them as a safety thing. I took her shooting a couple times and she actually was good at it. A natural. She’s got a bunch of ribbons and a few trophies in her room. And now, believe it or not, she says she wants to be a cop.”

  Soto nodded. Bosch wondered if she was drawing some connection between his daughter learning to shoot and her own experience during the shoot-out that took her partner’s life.

  “I’d like to meet her,” Soto said.

  Bosch nodded.

  “I’d like her to meet you,” he said.

  “Where’s her mother?” she asked.

  “She passed a few years back,” he said. “That’s when she came to live with me.”

  “And started shooting guns.”

  “Yeah.”

  That was all that was said until they reached Rancho Mirage.

  The house Audrey Willman moved into following her husband’s death was in a gated community called Desert View Estates. Bosch badged his way past the rent-a-cop at the gatehouse and found the home two minutes later. It stood three stories high and sat on a half acre of land in a neighborhood of similar-size homes and properties. There was a turnaround with a rock garden at its center surrounding a Joshua tree. Bosch and Soto approached the door and waited after pressing the bell.

  “You know why they’re called Joshua trees?” Soto said.

  Bosch glanced back at the centerpiece tree, its multiple branches fanned out like a candelabra.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “The Mormons named it,” she said. “It reminded them of the scene in the Bible where Joshua raises his hands up to the sky to pray.”

  Bosch nodded thoughtfully and the large oak door was answered behind him. He turned to see a uniformed housemaid, who made them stay outside while she closed the door and inquired as to whether Mrs. Willman would speak to them. This annoyed Bosch, since he knew the rent-a-cop had certainly called ahead to the house to warn that the detectives were coming. Mrs. Willman should have already been primed to receive them.