‘No, sir. Uh, they looked pretty dead to me. I saw a lot of blood. I thought I should leave it all alone for the authorities.’
‘Did you recognize either of those people?’
‘Well, the man I couldn’t rightly see, but I thought it might be Mr Elias just on account of the nice suit and how he looked. Now, the woman, I recognized her, too. I mean, I didn’t know her name or nothin’ but she got on the train a few minutes before and went on down.’
‘You mean she went down first?’
‘Yes, sir, she went down. She also a regular like Mr Elias. ‘Cept she ride maybe only one time a week. On Fridays, like last night. Mr Elias, he ride more.’
‘Why do you think she went down the hill but didn’t get off the train?’
Peete stared at him blankly, as if surprised by such an easy question.
‘’Cause she got shot.’
Bosch almost laughed but kept it to himself. He wasn’t being clear enough with the witness.
‘No, I mean before she was shot. It seems as though she never got up. As if she was on the bench and had been waiting to go back up when the shooter arrived behind the other passenger who was getting on.’
‘I surely don’t know what she was doing.’
‘When exactly did she go down?’
‘The ride right before. I sent Olivet down and that lady was on it. This was five, six minutes to ’leven. I sent Olivet down and I just let her sit down there till ‘leven and then I brought her up. You know, last ride. When she came up, those people were dead on there.’
Peete’s apparent ascribing of the female gender to the train was confusing to Bosch. He tried to make it clear.
‘So you sent Olivet down with the woman on it. Then five, six minutes later she is still on the train car when you bring it up. Is that right?’
‘Right.’
‘And during that five or six minutes that Olivet was sitting down there, you weren’t looking down there?’
‘No, I was counting the money outta the register. Then when it was ‘leven ’clock I went out and locked up Sinai. Then I brought Olivet on up. That’s when I found them. They were dead.’
‘But you didn’t hear anything from down there? No shots?’
‘No, like I told the lady—Miss Kizmin — I wear earplugs on account of the noise underneath the station. Also, I was countin’ the money. It’s mostly all quarters. I run ’em through the machine.’
He pointed to a stainless-steel change counter next to the cash register. It looked like the machine put the quarters into paper rolls containing ten dollars. He then stamped his foot on the wood floor, indicating the machinery below. Bosch nodded that he understood.
‘Tell me about the woman. You said she was a regular?’
‘Yeah, once a week. Fridays. Like maybe she have a little job up here in the apartments, cleanin’ or somethin’. The bus runs down there on Hill Street. I think she caught it down there.’
‘And what about Howard Elias?’
‘He a regular, too. Two, three times a week, all different times, sometimes late like last night. One time I was locking up and he was down there callin’ up to me. I made a ’ception. I brought him up on Sinai. I was bein’ nice. At Christmas time he gave me a little envelope. He was a nice man, ‘membering me like that.’
‘Was he always alone when he rode the train?’
The old man folded his arms and thought about this for a moment.
‘Mostly, I think.’
‘You remember him ever being with somebody else?’
‘I think one or two times I remember him bein’ with somebody. I can’t rightly remember who it was.’
‘Was it a man or woman?’
‘I don’t know. I think it mighta been a lady but I’m not gettin’ a picture, know what I mean?’
Bosch nodded and thought about things. He looked at Rider and raised his eyebrows. She shook her head. She had nothing more to ask.
‘Before you go, Mr Peete, can you turn everything on and let us ride down?’
‘Sure. Whatever you and Miss Kizmin need.’
He looked at Rider and bowed his head with a smile.
‘Thank you,’ Bosch said. ‘Then let’s do it.’
Peete moved to the computer keyboard and began typing in a command. Immediately the floor began to vibrate and there was a low-pitched grinding sound. Peete turned to them.
‘Anytime,’ he said above the din. Bosch waved and headed out to the train car. Chastain and Baker, the IAD man who had been paired with Kizmin Rider, were standing at the guard rail, looking down the track.
‘We’re going down,’ Bosch called over. ‘You guys coming?’
Without a word they fell in behind Rider and the four detectives stepped onto the train car called Olivet. The bodies had long been removed and the evidence technicians cleared out. But the spilt blood was still on the wood floor and the bench where Catalina Perez had sat. Bosch moved down the steps, careful to avoid stepping in the maroon pool that had leaked from Howard Elias’s body. He took a seat on the right side. The others sat on benches further up the train, away from where the bodies had fallen. Bosch looked up at the station house window and waved. Immediately the car jerked and began its descent. And immediately Bosch again recalled riding the train as a kid. The seat was just as uncomfortable as he remembered it.
Bosch didn’t look at the others as they rode. He kept looking out the lower door and at the track as it went underneath the car. The ride lasted no longer than a minute. At the bottom he was the first off. He turned and looked back up the tracks. He could see Peete’s head silhouetted in the station house window by the overhead light inside.
Bosch did not push through the turnstile, as he could see black fingerprint powder on it and didn’t want to get it on his suit. The department did not consider the powder a hazard of the job and would not repay a dry cleaning bill if he got it on himself. He pointed the powder out to the others and climbed over the turnstile.
He scanned the ground on the off chance something would catch his eye but there was nothing unusual. He was confident that the area had already been gone over by the RHD detectives anyway. Bosch had primarily come down to get a firsthand look and feel for the place. To the left of the archway was a concrete staircase for when the train wasn’t running or for those who were afraid to ride the incline railroad. The stairs were also popular with weekend fitness enthusiasts who ran up and down them. Bosch had read a story about it a year or so back in the Times. Next to the stairs a lighted bus stop had been cut into the steep hill. There was a glass fiberglass sunshade over a double-length bench. The side partitions were used to advertise films. On the one Bosch could see there was an ad for an Eastwood picture called Blood Work. The movie was based on a true story about a former FBI agent Bosch was acquainted with.
Bosch thought about whether the gunman could have waited in the bus shelter for Elias to walk up to the Angels Flight turnstile. He decided against it. The shelter was lit by an overhead light. Elias would have had a good view of whoever sat in there as he approached the train. Since Bosch thought it was likely that Elias knew his killer, he didn’t think the shooter would have waited out in the open like that.
He looked at the other side of the archway where there was a heavily landscaped ten-yard strip between the train entrance and a small office building. Bushes crowded thickly around an acacia tree. Bosch wished he hadn’t left his briefcase up in the station house.
‘Anybody bring a flashlight?’ he asked.
Rider reached into her purse and brought out a small penlight. Bosch took it and headed into the bushes, putting the light on the ground and studying his pathway in. He found no obvious sign that the killer had waited in here. There was trash and other debris scattered in behind the bushes but none of it appeared to be fresh. It looked like a place where homeless people had stopped to look through trash bags they had picked up from somewhere else.
Rider made her way into the bushes.
‘Find anything?’
‘Nothing good. I’m just trying to figure out where this guy would have hidden from Elias. This could have been as good a spot as any. Elias wouldn’t see him, he’d come out after Elias walked by, move up behind him at the train car.’
‘Maybe he didn’t need to hide. Maybe they walked here together.’
Bosch looked at her and nodded.
‘Maybe. As good as anything I’m coming up with in here.’
‘What about the bus bench?’
‘Too open, too well lighted. If it was someone Elias had reason to fear, he’d’ve seen him.’
‘What about a disguise? He could have sat in the bus stop in a disguise.’
‘There’s that.’
‘You’ve already considered all of this but you let me go on talking, saying things you already know.’
He didn’t say anything. He handed the flashlight back to Rider and headed out of the bushes. He looked over at the bus stop cnce more and felt sure he was right in his thinking. The bus stop hadn’t been used. Rider came up next to him and followed his gaze.
‘Hey, did you know Terry McCaleb over at the bureau?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, we worked a case once. Why, you know him?’
‘Not really. But I’ve seen him on TV. He doesn’t look like Clint Eastwood, if you ask me.’
‘Yeah, not really.’
Bosch saw Chastain and Baker had crossed the street and were standing in the hollow created by the closed roll-up doors at the entrance of the huge Grand Central Market. They were looking at something on the ground.
Bosch and Rider walked over.
‘Got something?’ Rider asked.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Chastain said.
He pointed to the dirty, worn tiles at his feet.
‘Cigarette butts,’ Baker said. ‘Five of them — same brand. Means somebody was waiting here a while.’
‘Could have been a homeless,’ Rider said.
‘Maybe,’ Baker replied. ‘Could’ve been our shooter.’ Bosch wasn’t that impressed.
‘Any of you smokers?’ he asked.
‘Why?’ Baker asked.
‘Because then you’d see what this probably is. What is it you see when you go in the front doors at Parker Center?’
Chastain and Baker looked puzzled.
‘Cops?’ Baker tried.
‘Yeah, but cops doing what?’
‘Smoking,’ Rider said.
‘Right. No smoking in public buildings anymore, so the smokers gather round the front doors. This market is a public facility.’
He pointed at the cigarette butts crushed on the tiles.
‘It doesn’t necessarily mean somebody was waiting there a long time. I think it means somebody in the market came out five times during the day for smokes.’
Baker nodded but Chastain refused to acknowledge the deduction.
‘Still could be our guy,’ he said. ‘Where else did he wait, the bushes over there?’
‘He could have. Or like Kiz said, maybe he didn’t wait. Maybe he walked right up to the train with Elias. Maybe Elias thought he was with a friend.’
Bosch reached into his jacket pocket and took out a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to Chastain.
‘Or maybe I’m all wrong and you’re all right. Bag’em and tag ‘em, Chastain. Make sure they get to the lab.’
A few minutes later Bosch was finished with his survey of the lower crime scene. He got on the train, picked up his briefcase where he had left it and moved up the stairs to one of the benches near the upper door. He sat down heavily, almost dropping onto the hard bench. He was beginning to feel fatigue take over and wished he had gotten some sleep before Irving’s call had come. The excitement and adrenaline that accompany a new case caused a false high that always wore off quickly. He wished he could have a smoke and then maybe a quick nap. But only one of the two was possible at the moment, and he would have to find an all-night market to get the smokes. Again he decided against it. For some reason he felt that his nicotine fast had become part of his vigil for Eleanor. He thought that if he smoked all would be lost, that he would never hear from her again.
‘What are you thinking, Harry?’
He looked up. Rider was in the doorway of the train, coming aboard.
‘Nothing. Everything. We’re really just getting started on this. There’s a lot to do.’
‘No rest for the weary.’
‘Say that again.’
His pager sounded and he grabbed it off his belt with the urgency of a man who has had one go off in a movie theater. He recognized the number on the display but couldn’t remember where he had seen it before. He took the phone out of his briefcase and punched it in. It was the home of Deputy Chief Irvin Irving.
‘I spoke with the chief,’ he said. ‘He’ll handle Reverend Tuggins. He’s not to be your concern.’
Irving put a sneer into the word Reverend.
‘Okay. He isn’t.’
‘So where are we?’
‘We’re still at the scene, just finishing up. We need to canvass the building over here for witnesses, then we’ll clear out. Elias kept an apartment downtown. That was where he was headed. We need to search that and his office as soon as the search warrants are signed.’
‘What about next of kin on the woman?’
‘Perez should be done by now, too.’
‘Tell me how it went at the Elias home.’
Since Irving had not asked before, Bosch assumed he was asking now because the chief of police wanted to know. Bosch quickly went over what had happened and Irving asked several questions about the reaction of Elias’s wife and son. Bosch could tell he asked them from the standpoint of public relations management. He knew that, just as with Preston Tuggins, the way in which Elias’s family reacted to his murder would have a direct bearing on how the community reacted.
‘So it does not at this time sound as though we can enlist the widow or the son in helping us contain things, correct?’
‘As of now, that’s correct. But once they get over the initial shock, maybe. You also might want to talk to the chief about calling the widow personally. I saw his picture on the wall in the house with Elias. If he’s talking to Tuggins, maybe he could also talk to the widow about helping us out.’
‘Maybe.’
Irving switched gears and told Bosch that his office’s conference room on the sixth floor of Parker Center was ready for the investigators. He said that the room was unlocked at the moment but in the morning Bosch would be given keys. Once the investigators moved in, the room was to remain locked at all times. He said that he would be in by ten and was looking forward to a more expanded rundown of the investigation at the team meeting.
‘Sure thing, Chief,’ Bosch said. ‘We should be in from the canvass and the searches by then.’
‘Make sure you are. I’ll be waiting.’
‘Right.’
Bosch was about to disconnect when he heard Irving’s voice.
‘Excuse me, Chief?’
‘One other matter. I felt because of the identity of one of the victims in this case that it was incumbent upon me to notify the inspector general. She seemed—how do I put this — she seemed acutely interested in the case when I explained the facts we had at that time. Using the word acutely is probably an understatement.’
Carla Entrenkin. Bosch almost cursed out loud but held it back. The inspector general was a new entity in the department: a citizen appointed by the Police Commission as an autonomous civilian overseer with ultimate authority to investigate or oversee investigations. It was a further politicizing of the department. The inspector general answered to the Police commission which answered to the city council and the mayor. And there were other reasons Bosch almost cursed as well. Finding Entrenkin’s name and private number in Elias’s phone book bothered him. It opened up a whole set of possibilities and complications.
‘Is she coming out here to the scene?’ he asked.
; ‘I don’t think so,’ Irving said. ‘I waited to call so that I could say the scene was clearing. I saved you that headache. But don’t be surprised if you hear directly from her in the daylight.’
‘Can she do that? I mean, talk to me without going through you? She’s a civilian.’
‘Unfortunately, she can do whatever she wants to.
That is how the Police Commission set up the job. So what it means is that this investigation, wherever it goes, it better be seamless, Detective Bosch. If it is not, we will be hearing from Carla Entrenkin about it.’
‘I understand.’
‘Good, then all we need is an arrest and all will be fine.’
‘Sure, Chief.’
Irving disconnected without acknowledging. Bosch looked up. Chastain and Baker were stepping onto the train.
‘There’s only one thing worse than having the IAD tagging along on this,’ he whispered to Rider. ‘That’s the inspector general watching over our shoulders.’
Rider looked at him.
‘You’re kidding? Carla I’mthinkin’ is on this?’
Bosch almost smiled at Rider’s use of the nickname bestowed on Entrenkin by an editorialist in the police union’s Thin Blue Line newsletter. She was called Carla I’mthinkin’ because of her tendency toward slow and deliberate speech whenever addressing the Police Commission and criticizing the actions or members of the department.
Bosch would have smiled but the addition of the inspector general to the case was too serious.
‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Now we got her, too.’
9
At the top of the hill they found Edgar and Fuentes had returned from notifying Catalina Perez’s family of her death, and Joe Dellacroce had returned from Parker Center with completed and signed search warrants. Court-approved searches were not always needed for the home and business of the victim of a homicide. But it made good sense to get warrants in high-profile cases. Such cases attracted high-profile attorneys if they eventually resulted in arrest. These attorneys invariably created their high profiles by being thorough and good at what they did. They exploited mistakes, took the frayed seams and loose ends of cases and ripped open huge holes — often big enough for their clients to escape through. Bosch was already thinking that far ahead. He knew he had to be very careful.
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