‘Sounds like you’re giving a press conference, Inspector. I’m going to take those files now. I’ll be back for the next batch later.’
He started to turn back to the front room.
‘I just thought you were different, that’s all,’ she said.
He turned back to her.
‘You don’t know if I’m different because you don’t know the first thing about me. I’ll talk to you later.’
‘There’s something else missing.’
Bosch stopped and looked back at her.
‘What?’
‘Howard Elias was a consummate note taker. He kept a spiral notebook on his desk or with him all the time. His last notebook is missing. You know where that is?’
Bosch came back to the desk and reopened his briefcase. He took the notebook out and tossed it down.
‘You won’t believe me but I had already put that in my briefcase when you came in and kicked us out.’
‘Matter of fact, I do believe you. Did you read it?’
‘Parts of it. Also before you showed up.’
She looked at him for a long moment.
‘I’ll look through it and if it is okay you will have it back later today. Thank you for returning it.’
‘You’re welcome.’
By the time Bosch got to Philippe’s the Original, the others were already there and eating. They had one of the long tables in the back room and were by themselves. He decided to take care of business before waiting in one of the lines at the counter to order.
‘How’d it go?’ Rider asked as he stepped over the bench and sat next to her.
‘Well, I think I definitely was a little too pale for Irving’s liking.’
‘Well, fuck him,’ Edgar said. ‘I didn’t sign up for this shit.’
‘Me, too,’ Rider said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Chastain asked.
‘Race relations,’ Rider said. ‘Typical you can’t figure that out.’
‘Hey, I — ’
‘Never mind,’ Bosch interjected. ‘Let’s talk about the case, okay? You first, Chastain. Did you finish the apartment building?’
‘Yeah, we finished. Nothing.’
‘Except we found out about the woman,’ Fuentes said.
‘Oh, yeah, right.’
‘What woman?’
‘The other victim. Catalina Perez. Hold a second.’
Chastain reached down to the bench next to him and came up with a legal tablet. He flipped to the second page and looked at the notes.
‘Apartment nine-oh-nine. Perez was the cleaning woman. Came every Friday night. So that’s where she was coming from.’
‘But she was going up,’ Bosch said. ‘She didn’t work till eleven?’
‘No, this is the deal. She works six to ten-thirty, then takes Angels Flight down to the bus stop, catches the bus and goes home. Only on the way down she must’ve looked in her purse and noticed her notebook, where she keeps her schedule and phone numbers, is missing. She took it out in the apartment last night because her employer, a Mr D. H. Reilly, changed his phone number and gave her the new one. Only she left the notebook on his kitchen table. She had to go back for it so she’d know her schedule. This lady ...’
He reached to the bench again and pulled up the notebook. It was in a plastic evidence bag.
‘... I mean, I looked at the schedule. She worked her tail off. She’s got gigs every day and a lot of nights. This Reilly guy said Friday nights was the only regular night he could get her for. She did a good job ...’
‘So she was going back up to get her book when she got popped,’ Edgar said.
‘Looks that way.’
‘The old I-O-I-A,’ Rider said in a singsong way that was not mirthful in any way.
‘What’s that?’ Chastain asked.
‘Nothing.’
They were all silent for a long moment. Bosch was thinking about how leaving that notebook behind had cost Catalina Perez her life. He knew that what Rider had said referred to the inequities of it all—the phrase she began using after a year on the homicide squad to sum up the bad breaks, coincidences and twists of fate that often left people dead.
‘Okay, good,’ Bosch finally said. ‘We now know what everybody was doing on that train. The rest of the building was clean?’
‘Nobody heard a thing, nobody saw a thing,’ Chastain said.
‘You get everybody?’
‘No response at four apartments. But they were all on the other side, away from Angels Flight.’
‘All right, let those go for now. Kiz, you talk to the wife and son again?’
Rider was chewing her last bite of French dip sandwich and held her finger up until she swallowed.
‘Yeah, separately and together. Nothing pulled my trigger. They’re both pretty much convinced a cop did it. I didn’t — ’
‘Of course they are,’ Chastain interjected.
‘Let her talk,’ Bosch said.
‘I didn’t pick up any feel that they knew much about his cases or possible threats. He didn’t even keep a home office. I touched on Elias’s fidelity and Millie said she believed he was faithful. She said it like that. She “believed.” Something about it sounds wrong. I think if there was no doubt she would say he “was” faithful, not that she “believed” he was faithful, know what I mean?’
‘So you think she knew?’
‘Maybe. But I also think that if she knew then she was the type that would put up with it. There was a lot of social standing in being Howard Elias’s wife. Lot of wives in that position make choices. They look the other way on some things to keep the image intact, to keep the life they have intact.’
‘What about the son?’
‘I think he believed his father was a god. He’s hurting.’
Bosch nodded. He respected Rider’s interviewing skills. He had seen her in action and knew she was empathic. He also knew he had used her in a way not so dissimilar to the way Irving had wanted to use her during the press conference. He had sent her to do the follow-up interviews because he knew she would be good at it. But also because she was black.
‘You ask them the A question?’
‘Yeah. They were both at home last night. Neither went out. They’re each other’s alibi.’
‘Great,’ Chastain said.
‘Okay, Kiz,’ Bosch said. ‘Anybody else got something they want to bring up?’
Bosch leaned forward on the table so he could look down his side and see every face. No one said anything. He noticed everybody had finished eating their sandwiches.
‘Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about the press conference, but the chief called in the cavalry. Tomorrow morning the bureau enters the case. We have a meet at eight in Irving’s conference room.’
‘Shit,’ Chastain said.
‘What the hell are they going to do that we can’t?’ Edgar asked.
‘Probably nothing,’ Bosch said. ‘But his announcing it at the press conference will probably go a long way toward keeping the peace. At least, for now. Anyway, let’s worry about that tomorrow when we see how things shake out. We still have the rest of today. Irving gave me an unofficial cease and desist until the agents show up but that’s bullshit. I say we keep working.’
‘Yeah, we don’t want the shark to drown, do we?’ Chastain said.
‘That’s right, Chastain. Now, I know nobody’s had much sleep. My thinking is that some of us keep working and knock off early, some of us go home, take a nap and come back in fresh tonight. Any problem with that?’
Again no one said anything.
‘All right, this is how we break it up. I’ve got three boxes of files from Elias’s office in my trunk. I want you IAD guys to take them and go back to Irving’s conference room. You take the files, pull out names of cops and anybody else to be checked out. I want a chart made up. When we get legit alibis we scratch the names off the chart and move on. I want this ready by the time the bureau arrives tomorrow. When yo
u have it done, then you guys can knock off for the night.’
‘And what are you going to be doing?’ Chastain asked.
‘We’re going to run down Elias’s secretary and his clerk. Then after that, I’m going home to take a nap. Hopefully. Then tonight we’re going to talk to Harris and chase down that Internet thing. I want to know what that’s all about before the bureau comes in.’
‘You better be careful with Harris.’
‘We will. That’s one reason we’re waiting until tonight. We play it right and the media doesn’t even find out we talked to the guy.’
Chastain nodded.
‘What about these files you’re giving us, they old or new?’
‘They’re old ones. Entrenkin started on the closed cases.’
‘When are we going to see the Black Warrior file? That’s the one. The rest of this is bullshit.’
‘Hopefully, I’ll be picking that up later today. But the rest isn’t bullshit. We have to look at every damn file in that office. Because the one we skip is likely to be the one some lawyer shoves up our ass in trial. You understand that? Don’t skip anything.’
‘I got it.’
‘Besides, what do you care so much about the Black Warrior file for? You cleared those guys on it, right?’
‘Yeah, so?’
‘So what are you going to find in the file other than what you already know? You think you missed something, Chastain?’
‘No, but ...’
‘But what?’
‘It’s the case of the moment. I think there’s gotta be something there.’
‘Well, we’ll see. All in good time. For now stick to the old files and don’t skip anything.’
‘I told you, we won’t. It’s just a pain in the ass to know you’re wasting time.’
‘Welcome to homicide.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brown bag. It contained several copies of the key Irving had given him that he had had made in Chinatown on his way to the restaurant. He turned the bag over on the center of the table and keys clattered onto the table.
‘Everybody take a key. They’ll open the door to Irving’s conference room. Once the files are in there I want the room locked at all times.’
Everybody reached to the center of the table and took a key except Bosch. He had already put the original on his key ring. He stood up and looked at Chastain.
‘Let’s go get those files out of my car.’
16
The interviews with the secretary and the clerk were so uneventful that Bosch wished the detectives could have spent the time in their beds sleeping. Tyla Quimby, the secretary, had been out with the flu and holed up in her home in the Crenshaw district for the last week. She had no knowledge of Howard Elias’s activities during the days before his death. Aside from exposing Bosch, Edgar and Rider to the flu, she gave the detectives very little. She explained that Elias kept his case strategies and other aspects of his work largely to himself. Her role was primarily opening mail, answering phones, handling walk-in visitors and clients, and paying the office expenses through a small operating account Elias put money into each month. As far as the phone traffic went, she said Elias had a direct private phone line in his office that over the years had become widely known among friends and associates as well as some reporters and even enemies. So she was of little use as far as helping them determine whether Elias had been specifically threatened in the weeks before his murder. The investigators thanked her and left her home, hoping they would not fall victim to her illness.
The clerk, John Babineux, was an equal disappointment. He was able to confirm that it had been he and Michael Harris who had worked until late Friday with Elias. But Babineux said that Harris and Elias had been behind closed doors most of the evening. Babineux, as it turned out, had graduated from the USC law school three months before and was studying for the bar exam at night while clerking for Elias by day. He did his studying in Elias’s offices at night because it allowed him access to the law books he needed for memorizing case law and penal codes. It obviously was a better study environment than the crowded apartment near USC he shared with two other law students. Shortly before eleven he had walked out with Elias and Harris because he had felt he had done enough studying for one night. He said he and Harris walked to their cars in a nearby pay lot while Elias walked up Third Street alone toward Hill Street and Angels Flight.
Like Quimby, Babineux described Elias as secretive about his cases and preparation for trial. The clerk said that his responsibility in the last week of work had largely been preparing the transcripts of the many pretrial depositions taken in the Black Warrior case. His job was to download the transcripts and related material onto a laptop computer which would then be taken to court and accessed by Elias when he needed specific references to evidence and testimony during trial.
Babineux could give the detectives no information about specific threats to Elias — at least none that the attorney was taking seriously. He described Elias as extremely upbeat in recent days. He said Elias wholeheartedly believed that he was going to win the Black Warrior case.
‘He said it was a slam dunk,’ Babineux told the three detectives.
As Bosch drove up Woodrow Wilson Drive toward home he thought about the two interviews and wondered why Elias had been so secretive about the case he was bringing to trial. This didn’t fit with his past history of press leaks and sometimes full-scale press conferences as a primary strategy. Elias was being uncharacteristically quiet, yet he was confident in his case, enough to call it a slam dunk.
Bosch hoped the explanation of this would be revealed when he got the Black Warrior file from Entrenkin, hopefully in a few hours. He decided to put thoughts of it aside until then.
Immediately Eleanor came to mind. He thought about the closet in the bedroom. He purposely hadn’t checked it before, not sure how he would react if he found she had taken her clothes. He decided he needed to do that now, to get it over with. It would be a good time to do it. He was too tired now to do anything other than crash down onto his bed, regardless of what he found.
But as he came around the last curve he saw Eleanor’s car, the beat-up Taurus, parked at the curb in front of their house. She had left the carport open for him. He felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders begin to relax. The tightness in his chest began to ease. She was home.
The house was quiet when he entered. He put his briefcase down on one of the dining room chairs and started stripping off his tie as he moved into the living room. He then moved down the short hallway and looked into the bedroom. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark except for the outline of exterior light around the window. He saw Eleanor’s still form under the covers on the bed. Her brown hair was splayed over the pillow.
He moved into the bedroom and quietly took off his clothes, draping them over a chair. He then went back down the hallway to the guest bathroom to take a shower without waking her up. Ten minutes later he slid into the bed next to her. He was on his back, looking through the darkness to the ceiling. He listened to her breathing. He didn’t hear the slow, measured breaths of her sleeping that he was used to.
‘You awake?’ he whispered.
‘Mmm-hmm.’
He waited a long moment.
‘Where were you, Eleanor?’
‘Hollywood Park.’
Bosch didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to accuse her of lying. Maybe Jardine, the security guy, had simply missed her during his survey of the video screens. He stared at the ceiling, wondering what to say next.
‘I know that you called there looking for me,’ Eleanor said. ‘I knew Tom Jardine in Las Vegas. He used to work at the Flamingo. He lied when you called. He came to me first.’
Bosch closed his eyes and remained silent.
‘I’m sorry, Harry, I just didn’t want to have to deal with you then.’
‘Deal with me?’
‘You know what I
mean.’
‘Not really, Eleanor. How come you didn’t answer my message when you got home?’
‘What message?’
Bosch realized he had played the message back himself earlier. There wouldn’t have been a flashing light on the machine. She would not have heard the message.
‘Never mind. When did you get home?’
She lifted her head off the pillow to look at the glowing numbers on the bedside clock.
‘Couple hours ago.’
‘How’d you do?’
He didn’t really care. He just wanted her to keep talking to him.
‘All right. Came out a little ahead but I messed up. I missed a big one.’
‘What happened?’
‘I went with a long shot when I should’ve stuck with a sure thing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was dealt a pair of aces but I also had four clubs — ace, three, four, five. So on the draw I broke the pair of aces. I discarded the ace of hearts and went for the deuce, the two of clubs to make the straight flush. They keep a progressive bonus pot going for a straight flush. It was up to about three thousand dollars. That’s what I was going for.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I didn’t get the deuce. I didn’t even get a club to make a flush. What I got was the ace of spades.’
‘Damn.’
‘Yeah, I threw down an ace only to get an ace. I stayed in with that but didn’t come close. Three tens won it—the pot was about three hundred. So if I had kept the ace of hearts I would have ended up with three aces and been the winner. I blew it. That’s when I left.’
Bosch didn’t say anything. He thought about the story and wondered if she was trying to say something else. Tossing the ace of hearts, aiming for the bigger pot, failing.
After a few minutes of silence, Eleanor spoke again.
‘Were you out on a case? You hadn’t been in the bed. I could tell.’
‘Yeah, I got a call out.’
‘I thought you weren’t up on rotation.’
‘It’s a long story and I don’t feel like talking about it. I want to talk about us. Tell me what’s going on, Eleanor. We can’t ... this isn’t right. Some nights I don’t even know where you are or if you are all right. Something’s wrong or missing and I don’t know what it is.’
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