At least they were in the shade. The dry desert heat was getting to Bosch. He felt his lips drying and starting to crack. He studied the workmanship of the front door and then his eyes traveled up to the tongue-and-groove woodwork of the interior of the porte cochere’s roof. He was reminded of the major discrepancy in property values he had seen when he had looked up David Willman’s address at the time of his death and the address where his widow now lived.
“Tell you one thing,” he said. “Either Willman had a hell of an insurance policy or there was a payoff somewhere. This isn’t the kind of place a hunting guide ends up with.”
“She probably sued Broussard,” Soto said. “Wrongful death or something.”
Bosch nodded his agreement as the door was finally reopened, this time by a woman of about fifty who identified herself as Audrey Willman. She was tall and lean and wore a lot of gold jewelry.
“Can I help you, Detectives?” she asked.
Bosch decided on a direct approach.
“We are investigating a murder in Los Angeles that may be connected to your husband’s death. Can we come in?”
“He’s been dead almost ten years. How could it have anything to do with a murder in L.A.?”
“We can explain if we could come in.”
She let them in and they convened in a living room, with Bosch and Soto sitting on a couch directly across from Audrey Willman, who sat in what looked like an antique leather club chair.
“So,” she said. “Explain.”
“When your husband died, he owned several firearms,” Bosch began.
“Of course he did,” Willman said. “He was a licensed dealer. He bought and sold guns.”
“We understand that. What we are trying to determine is the whereabouts of one of the weapons he owned at that time.”
Audrey Willman leaned forward slightly, eyebrows pulled together in suspicion.
“You’re kidding me, right?” she said.
“No, ma’am,” Bosch said, calling on the ghost of Joe Friday for his deadpan delivery. “We’re not kidding. We need to know. What happened to the weapons your husband owned after his death?”
She held her hands out palms up as if to signal that the answer was obvious and not worth the two-and-a-half-hour drive out from L.A.
“I sold them. I sold everything—all legally. After what happened, do you think I’d want guns around anymore?”
That was the opening Bosch was looking for.
“What exactly did happen?” he asked. “I only got the shorthand from the Riverside Sheriff’s Office. How did your husband end up being killed by his best friend?”
Willman made a dismissive gesture with her hand.
“The Riverside Sheriff’s would be the last place I would look to find out what happened,” she said.
Bosch waited but she said nothing else.
“Well, can you tell us your version of what happened?” he asked.
“I’d love to but I can’t,” Willman said. “There was litigation. I sued him but I can’t talk about it.”
She used her hands again to gesture toward the ceiling and her opulent surroundings. The indication was clear. She had taken a sizable settlement in the matter but part of the deal was her silence.
“You’re saying there was a confidentiality clause in the settlement?”
“That’s correct.”
“Okay, I understand. Can you tell me what it was you alleged in the lawsuit before there was a settlement and a confidentiality agreement?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t say a word about anything.”
She sliced a hand through the air, signifying the finality of her stand on the subject.
Bosch nodded. There didn’t appear to be any way into the lawsuit with her, so he returned to the guns.
“Okay, that’s understood. Let’s go back to the guns you said you sold. The gun in question was never reregistered following a sale. It still is in your husband’s name in the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms registration computer.”
“That can’t be. I had everything sold perfectly legit. Ted Sampson did it. He bought the ranch and used his own dealer’s license to sell everything.”
Bosch assumed that Ted Sampson was the man he had spoken to the day before in the office at White Tail.
“Well, with this particular gun, there is no record of it being sold by anyone. It was a Kimber hunting rifle. The Montana model. Does that sound familiar to you?”
“No gun sounds familiar to me. I hate guns. I have no guns in this house. When I moved here I left all of that behind. But I kept careful inventory records because before all of this—”
She waved her hand again, indicating what the lawsuit settlement had brought.
“—I thought the money from those guns might be all I’d be left with. That and a twenty-five-thousand-dollar insurance policy.”
“Okay,” Bosch said. “Then if Ted didn’t sell this gun in particular, where would it be?”
She shook her head as if she was baffled.
“I have no idea! The garage at the old house was his gun room but we cleared it out. I’m sure of that. There was nothing left in there when Ted was finished, and I inventoried every gun we pulled out.”
“Do you still have that inventory?”
She thought for a moment.
“As a matter of fact, I think I do.”
“Can we see it, Mrs. Willman? It might be important.”
“Wait here. It’s in my tax files. I’m sure of it.”
She got up and walked across the room to a set of French doors with curtains. They opened into a study, where Bosch could see a desk, bookshelves, and a stationary bike positioned in front of a flat-screen television. Willman closed the doors behind her.
She was gone five minutes. Bosch and Soto made eye contact but never spoke. They both knew that the inventory, if Willman’s widow still had it, could be a solid piece of connecting evidence should the investigation ever move toward a prosecution without the murder weapon.
When Willman emerged from the study, she was carrying a yellow legal pad with several pages folded back and a rubber band around it.
“Found it.”
As she approached, she pulled off the rubber band, but it had become brittle over time and snapped in her hand. She sat down and started pulling the pages back over and studying each one. Four pages into this process she stopped.
“Here are the guns.”
She handed the pad to Bosch. He took out his own notebook, where he had written down the serial number of the Kimber Model 84 that David Willman had owned, according to ATF records. Soto leaned over to look at the pad and they studied the list. There were eighteen rifles and handguns listed, along with the amounts received in their sales. None were described as a Kimber make and none of the serial numbers matched the number Bosch had in his notes. Willman’s Kimber had never been sold. Bosch noticed that the list also contained two ammunition bandoliers but they didn’t go with any of the guns on the list.
“Can we borrow this, Mrs. Willman?” Bosch asked.
“I’d rather you not take it,” she answered. “I can copy it for you. I have a copier.”
“It would be better if we had the original document. We can give you a receipt for it and will return it when it’s no longer needed.”
“I don’t understand. Why would you want it?”
“It could be an important part of the investigation. If the gun was used in the homicide we are investigating, we need to document its origin. This inventory helps us prove that the gun went missing at least nine years ago when you documented what weapons your husband had in his possession at the time of his death.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “You can take it but I want to make a copy and I want the original back.”
“You’ll get it back,” Bosch said. “I promise.”
“I’ll write a receipt,” Soto said.
While Soto went to work on the receipt Bosch asked Willm
an a question he had been holding back on until the end of the interview.
“What weapon was your husband carrying on the day of the accident?”
Willman made a sound of disbelief before answering. It did not seem to be directed at Bosch, but rather carried some emotion about the content of the question. It was a small confirmation of Bosch’s suspicion that the lawsuit she filed and was now sworn to secrecy about had not been a routine wrongful-death claim. He guessed that Audrey Willman had alleged that David Willman’s death was anything but an accident.
“He was carrying his twenty-gauge shotgun, like he always did,” she said.
“A shotgun while hunting wild boar? Was that normal?”
“He wasn’t hunting wild boar. The other man was. Dave was the guide. The other man had asked him to guide. So he carried a shotgun in case a boar came out of the brush and charged. He would use it to put the animal down.”
She didn’t say the name Broussard. Bosch wondered if that was part of the lawsuit settlement or if she just couldn’t bring herself to mention the name of the man who had killed her husband. He tried one more time to get behind the lock on the legal action.
“If you know something about your husband and Charles Broussard that was not in the lawsuit, we’d be happy to listen.”
Audrey Willman looked at Bosch for a long moment and then shook her head.
“I can’t discuss him in any regard,” she said. “I can’t even say his name. Would you please just give me the receipt and go? I have things to do.”
Almost, Bosch thought. She had almost opened up.
25
They left the house fifteen minutes later and Bosch secured the legal pad in his briefcase. Rather than drive toward the 10 freeway, which would get them back to L.A. the fastest, Bosch pointed the car toward Hemet.
“Where are we going?” Soto asked.
“To the house Willman lived in when he was alive,” Bosch said.
“The gun?”
He nodded.
“Just a hunch. It’s gotta be somewhere. I want to check out the garage that Audrey said was used as her husband’s gun room.”
“You don’t think Broussard got it? I mean, that’s why he felt he was in the clear to eliminate Willman.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Willman told him after the Mariachi Plaza shooting that he had gotten rid of it. Broussard may have only thought he was in the clear.”
“But instead Willman hung on to it? Hid it somewhere?”
Bosch nodded.
“Maybe. Like an insurance policy. Maybe he hid it somewhere his wife didn’t know to look after Broussard killed him.”
Soto nodded, buying in.
“Okay. Do we need a search warrant?”
Bosch shook his head.
“Not if we’re invited in.”
They drove in silence for a while and then Soto asked a question.
“What did you think of Audrey? She really wanted to tell us about that lawsuit.”
“She did. I think she feels guilty.”
“About what?”
“She took the money and shut up. She knows the money—however much it was—was Broussard buying his way out. Over time that’s got to be tough to live with. Doesn’t matter how fancy your digs are. It all came from hush money. Anyway, we need to find another way into the lawsuit, maybe talk to the D.A.’s Office to see what they can do about breaking the seal on it.”
“I’d sure love to read it.”
They got to Hemet in a half hour. Along the way Bosch took a call from Captain Crowder, who wanted an update on where the investigation stood. Bosch told him that they were following a lead on the murder weapon and hoped to have something solid to report later in the day or by morning. This appeased the captain for the time being and he ended the call without asking further questions.
The house where the Willmans had lived before Dave’s death at the hands of Broussard was a modest ranch house in a middle-class neighborhood. It was freshly painted and had a neatly trimmed yard and an attached double garage. The property records Bosch had checked said it now belonged to someone named Bernard Contreras.
A woman of about thirty answered Bosch’s knock on the door. She looked like she was at least seven months pregnant.
“Mrs. Contreras?”
“Yes?”
Bosch pulled his badge and identified himself and Soto.
“We’re homicide investigators and we are out here looking for a gun that may have been involved in a case we are working,” Bosch said.
The woman put her hand over her protruding stomach as if to protect her unborn child from even the word gun.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “We have no guns in this household.”
“We’re not talking about you or your husband,” Bosch said. “We’re here because the man who lived here before you had guns.”
“The man who was killed?”
“Correct, the man who was killed. He was a gun dealer and we are looking for one of his guns.”
“That was a long time ago. My husband and I bought this place—”
“We know that. That’s why we have a favor to ask. We’re hoping you’ll be willing to help us with the investigation.”
The woman looked suspiciously at Bosch and maintained her guarded stance.
“What is it?”
“We want to look in your garage.”
“Why would you want to look in my garage?”
“Because the previous owner—the man who was killed—kept at least part of his inventory in the garage here. We want to take a look and just satisfy ourselves that the gun we are looking for is not here.”
“We’ve lived here six years. I think we would have found a gun if one was left behind.”
“I think you’re probably right, Mrs. Contreras. But we’re cops and we need to see for ourselves so we can rule it out. Besides, this gun—if it is here—would have been hidden.”
The woman dropped her hand from her belly and seemed to relax a little bit. Bosch thought that maybe she was now curious herself.
“Do you need to have a search warrant or something like that?” she asked.
“Not if you invite us in to search,” Bosch said.
She thought about it for a moment before giving the go-ahead.
“I’ll open the door,” she said. “But we have a lot of boxes in there. Stuff we’re taking to storage and I don’t want you going through it.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Contreras. We’re not going to be looking through your property.”
She stepped back and closed the door. Bosch and Soto walked along a flagstone path to the driveway and waited in front of the garage. The door had no windows and Bosch guessed that this was a security measure taken by Willman when he had stored guns in the garage.
The door started slowly going up. Mrs. Contreras was waiting inside, her hand back in place on top of her stomach.
Bosch stepped in and looked about. It was a standard two-car garage with a workbench taking up the space in one of the bays and storage shelves and a water heater lining the back wall. None of the walls had been finished, exposing the wood framework and insulation. It was a cost-cutting move elected by the contractor or home buyer when the house was originally built.
There was a compact car in the bay opposite the workbench and it was clear to Bosch that Mrs. Contreras got to park in the garage while her husband used the driveway or the street.
The garage had exposed rafters and a storage platform overhead. Several boxes were stacked up there. Bosch pointed up.
“Those boxes up there are yours?”
“Yes. Ours. This place was completely empty when we moved in. If there was a gun we would have seen it.”
Mounted to the two-by-fours of the wall on either side of the workbench were side-by-side cabinets made of heavy steel with key locks and additional hasps for padlocks.
“Those are gun cases,” Bosch said. “They were here when you moved in?”
“Ye
s, they were left by Mrs. Willman when we bought the place.”
“Are they locked?”
“No, we don’t lock them,” Contreras said. “You can check them.”
Bosch opened the cabinets and saw they were being used for routine storage. No guns. He used a stepladder that was next to the workbench to look over the top of the cabinets. Dust and dead bugs lay on top of each but no guns.
Bosch moved over to the workbench. A vise with a padded grip was mounted on one end and a second smaller vise was mounted at a midpoint on the six-foot-long bench. He stepped closer and could smell the faint scents of break-free oil and bore solvent, two materials every gun dealer would have in supply.
“This bench was also left here? The vises—they’re set up for holding a rifle while you work on the bore or add a scope.”
“Yes, the bench was also left here and we decided to use it. It takes up a lot of space, though. My husband has to park in the driveway but he doesn’t mind. He likes to tinker in here on Saturdays.”
Bosch just nodded. He was looking at the bench, its work surface stained with oil. It was obviously homemade, constructed of two-by-fours and plywood. It had a work surface on top and one shelf below. Both surfaces were inch-thick plywood, framed underneath by lengths of two-by-fours. It was a sturdy, heavy construction that at the moment supported a variety of power tools and other equipment.
Bosch put his hand on the bench for support and squatted down to look under the top surface. In the corner of the thick frame, he saw a gun attached to the underside with plastic ties.
“There’s a gun under here,” he said. “A handgun.”
“Oh my gosh!” Mrs. Contreras exclaimed.
Bosch took a pair of rubber gloves out of his jacket pocket and put them on. He then pulled out his phone and squatted down to take photos of the gun in place, using the flash to illuminate the dark underside of the bench. He then grabbed a carpet cutter from the array of tools on top of the bench and used it to slash the plastic ties.
He pulled the gun free and stood up to look at it with Soto. It was a Glock P17. Mrs. Contreras leaned in to study it as well, and her face took on a look of trepidation.
The Burning Room Page 21
