The Wrong Side of Goodbye

by Michael Connelly

  It was a disgusting process with the can largely filled with rotting food and the occasional disposable baby diaper. It also appeared that at some point during the weekend someone had vomited directly into the receptacle. It took him a solid ten minutes to thoroughly dig through it to the bottom. He found no mask and no gloves.

  Undaunted, Bosch went to the next trash can twenty yards further down Maclay and started the same process. Without his jacket on, his badge was visible on his belt, and that probably stopped shop owners and passersby from asking what he was doing. At the second can he drew the attention of a family eating at the front window of a taqueria ten feet away. Bosch tried to conduct his search while positioning his body as a visual blind to them. It was more of the same detritus in the second can but he hit pay dirt halfway through the excavation. There in the debris was a black leather wrestling mask with a green-and-red design.

  Bosch straightened up out of the can and stripped off his gloves, dropping them to the ground next to the trash can. He then pulled his cell phone and took several photos of the mask in place in the can. After documenting the find he called the SFPD com room and told the officer in charge he needed to call in an evidence team from the Sheriff’s Department to collect the mask from the trash receptacle.

  “You can’t bag it and tag it yourself?” the officer asked.

  “No, I can’t bag it and tag it,” Bosch said. “There is going to be genetic evidence inside and possibly outside the mask. I want to go four by four on it so some lawyer down the line doesn’t get to tell a jury I did it all wrong and tainted the case. Okay?”

  “Okay, okay, I was just asking. I need to get Captain Trevino to sign off on this and then I’ll call the Sheriff’s. It might be a while.”

  “I’ll be here waiting.”

  A while turned out to be three hours. Bosch waited patiently, spending part of the time talking to Lourdes when she called him after he had texted her a photo of the mask. It was a good find and would help bring a new dimension to their understanding of the Screen Cutter. They also agreed there would undoubtedly be genetic material inside the mask that could be linked to the rapist. In that regard it would be like the semen collected in three of the other assaults: a definitive link, but only if the suspect was identified. Bosch said he was holding out hope that they would do better and that the treated leather of the mask would hold a fingerprint left when the mask was pulled on and adjusted. A fingerprint would be a whole new angle. The Screen Cutter may never have been DNA-typed, but he could have been fingerprinted. A driver’s license in California required a thumbprint. If there was a thumbprint on the mask, they might be in business. Bosch had worked cases with the LAPD where prints were pulled off of leather coats and boots. It wasn’t a reach to hope the mask could be the case breaker.

  “You done good, Harry,” Lourdes said. “Now I wish I was working today.”

  “It’s okay,” Bosch said. “We’re both on the case now. My get is your get and vice versa.”

  “Well, that attitude will make Captain Trevino happy.”

  “Which is what we are all striving for.”

  She was laughing as they disconnected.

  Bosch went back to waiting. Repeatedly through the afternoon he had to shoo away pedestrians aiming to use the trash can for its public purpose. The one instance where someone got by him was when he remembered he had left his sports coat on the bus bench up at the corner and walked back to retrieve it. When he turned back around he saw a woman who was pushing a baby carriage throw something into the receptacle containing the mask. She had come out of nowhere and Bosch was too late to stop her. He expected to find another disposable diaper when he returned but instead found a half-eaten ice-cream cone splatted directly on the mask.

  Cursing to himself, Bosch put on latex again, reached in, and flipped the melting chocolate mess off the mask. When he did so he saw a single glove much like the one he was wearing underneath the mask. It reduced his frustration level but not by much.

  The two-man forensic team from the Sheriff’s Department didn’t arrive until almost 4 p.m. and they didn’t seem too pleased about the Sunday afternoon callout or the fact that they would be working in a trash can. Bosch was unapologetic and asked them to photograph, chart, and collect the evidence. That process, which included emptying the entire contents of the can onto plastic sheets and then examining each piece before transferring it to a second sheet took nearly two hours.

  In the end, the mask and two gloves were recovered and taken to the Sheriff’s lab for analysis along all lines of evidence. Bosch asked for a rush but the lead forensic tech just nodded and smiled as though he was dealing with a naive child who thought he was first in line in life.

  Bosch got back to the detective bureau at seven and saw no sign of Captain Trevino. The door to his office was closed and the transom window dark. Bosch sat down in his cubicle and typed up an evidence report on the recovery of the mask and gloves and the anonymous tip that led to them. He then printed two copies, one for his file and one for the captain.

  He went back to the computer and filled out a supplemental lab request form that would be sent to the Sheriff’s lab at Cal State L.A. and serve as a means of doubling-down on the request for a rush. The timing was good. A courier from the lab made a weekly stop at the SFPD on Mondays to drop off and pick up evidence. Bosch’s request for a rush would get to the lab by the next afternoon, even if the forensic tech who collected the evidence didn’t pass along his verbal request. In the request Bosch asked for a complete examination of the mask inside and out for fingerprints, hair, and all other genetic material. Additionally, he asked the lab to check the inside of the latex gloves for similar evidence. He cited the fact that the investigation was a serial offender case as the reason for fast-tracking the analysis. He wrote: “This offender will not stop his terror and violence against women until we stop him. Please speed this along.”

  This time he printed out three copies of his work—one for his own case file, one for Trevino, and the third for the lab courier. After dropping off the third copy at the evidence control room, Bosch was clear to head home. He had put in a solid day and had broken out a good lead with the mask and gloves. But instead he headed back to his cubicle to shift cases and spend some time on the Vance investigation. Thanks to the attendance board, he knew that Trevino had long ago signed out for the day and that he need not worry about being discovered.

  Bosch was intrigued by the story Halley Lewis had told him about Dominick Santanello being drawn into the Chicano Pride movement while in training down in San Diego. His description of the park beneath a freeway overpass was particularly worth checking into. Bosch came at it from several angles on Google and soon enough was looking at photos and a map of a place called Chicano Park, which was located beneath the 5 freeway and the exit to the bridge crossing San Diego Bay to Coronado Island.

  The photos of the park showed dozens of murals painted on every concrete pillar and stanchion supporting the overhead freeway and bridge. The murals depicted religious allegories, cultural heritage, and individuals of note in the Chicano Pride movement. One pillar was painted with a mural that marked the founding of the park in April 1970. Bosch realized that Santanello was in Vietnam by then, which meant that his association with the woman Lewis identified as Gabriela began before the park was formally approved by the city and dedicated.

  The mural he was looking at listed the park’s founding artists at the bottom. The list was long and the paint faded. The names disappeared behind a bed of zinnias that circled the bottom of the pillar like a wreath. Bosch did not see the name Gabriela but realized that there were names on the pillar he could not make out.

  He closed the photo and spent the next twenty minutes searching the Internet for a better angle on the pillar or an early shot taken before the flower wreath grew to obscure the names. He found nothing and was frustrated. There was no guarantee that Gabriela would even be listed on the mural, but he knew he would need to sto
p at the park and check when he went down to San Diego to look for 1970 birth records of a girl with a father named Dominick Santanello.

  After a stop for a combined lunch and dinner at Art’s Deli in Studio City, Bosch got to Woodrow Wilson Drive late in the evening. He parked as usual around the bend and then walked back to his house. He pulled a week’s worth of deliveries out of the mailbox, including a small box that had been stuffed in as well.

  He went into the house and dumped the envelopes onto the dining room table to be dealt with later. But he opened the box and found the GPS detector/jammer he had ordered.

  He grabbed a beer out of the fridge and stripped off his jacket before taking the device over to the reclining chair in front of the living room TV. Normally, he would have put on a disc but he wanted to check the news and see if they were still pumping the Screen Cutter story.

  He turned on channel 5 because it was a local independent channel that paid attention to news stories outside of Hollywood. Bosch had seen a news van with a 5 on the side at the police station on Friday when the press conference took place.

  The news was already under way when he turned the television on. He started reading through the instruction manual that came with the GPS device and kept one ear on the TV.

  He was halfway through learning how to identify a GPS tracker and jam its signal when the drone of the news anchor caught his attention.

  “…Vance was instrumental in the development of stealth technologies.”

  He looked up and saw a photo of a much younger Whitney Vance on the screen and then it was gone and the anchor was on to the next story.

  Bosch leaned forward in his chair, fully alert. He grabbed the remote and switched over to channel 9 but there was nothing on Vance. Bosch got up and went to the laptop on the dining room table. He went to the home page of the Los Angeles Times. The top headline read:

  Report: Billionaire Whitney Vance Dies Steel

  Tycoon Also Left Mark on Aviation

  The story was short because information was short. It simply said that Aviation Week was reporting on its website that Whitney Vance had died after a brief illness. The report cited unnamed sources and gave no details other than to say Vance had died peacefully at his home in Pasadena.

  Bosch slammed the laptop closed.

  “Goddamn it,” he said.

  The report in the Times didn’t even confirm the report in Aviation Week. Bosch got up and paced the living room, not sure what he could do but feeling guilty in some way and not trusting the report that Vance died peacefully in his home.

  As he came back toward the dining room table he saw the business card Vance had given him. He pulled his phone and called the number. This time it was answered.

  “Hello?”

  Bosch knew the voice did not belong to Whitney Vance. He didn’t say anything.

  “Is this Mr. Bosch?”

  Bosch hesitated but then answered.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s Sloan.”

  “Is he really dead?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vance has passed on. And that means your services are no longer needed. Good-bye, Mr. Bosch.”

  “Did you kill him, you bastards?”

  Sloan hung up halfway through the question. Bosch almost hit the redial button but knew that Sloan would not take the call. The number would soon be dead and so too would Bosch’s connection to the Vance empire.

  “Goddamn it,” he said again.

  His words echoed through the empty house.

  23

  Bosch stayed up half the night jumping from CNN to Fox News and then online to the Times website, hoping for an update on the death of Whitney Vance. But he came away disappointed in the supposed twenty-four-hour news cycle. There were no updates on the cause of or details about the death. All each entity did was add backstory, digging out old clips and adding them to the tail of the very thinly reported breaking news of the death. At about 2 a.m. CNN reran the 1996 interview Larry King did with Vance on his book publication. Bosch watched this with interest because it showed a much more spry and engaging version of Vance.

  Sometime after that Bosch fell asleep in the leather chair in front of the television, four empty bottles on the table next to him. The TV was still on when he awoke and the first image he saw was the Coroner’s van exiting through the gate of the Vance estate on San Rafael and driving past the camera. The camera then held on the black steel gate rolling closed.

  In the video, it was dark on the street but there was no time stamp. Because Vance would get the VIP treatment from the Coroner’s Office, Bosch guessed that the body was not removed until the middle of the night after a thorough investigation that would have included detectives from the Pasadena Police Department.

  It was 7 a.m. in Los Angeles and that meant the eastern media was already well into the Vance story. The CNN anchor flipped the story to a financial reporter who talked about Vance’s majority holdings in the company his father had founded and what could happen now that he had died. The reporter said that Vance had no “known heirs” and so it remained to be seen what instructions he left in his will for the distribution of his wealth and holdings. The reporter intimated that there could be surprises in the will. He added that Vance’s probate attorney, a Century City lawyer named Cecil Dobbs, could not be reached for comment because of the early hour in Los Angeles.

  Bosch knew he had to get up to San Fernando to continue working through the latest call-in tips and leads on the Screen Cutter case. He slowly climbed out of the leather chair, felt his back protest in a half dozen places, and made his way to his bedroom to shower and prepare for the day.

  The shower made him feel crisp—at least temporarily. As he dressed he realized he was famished.

  In the kitchen he brewed a half pot of coffee and then began searching for something to eat. Without his daughter living in the house anymore, Bosch had fallen off on keeping the cabinets and refrigerator stocked. All he found was a box of Eggo waffles in the freezer containing two last soldiers exhibiting freezer burn. Bosch put them both in the toaster and hoped for the best. He checked the cabinets and refrigerator a second time and found no syrup, butter, or even peanut butter anywhere. He was going to have to go dry with the waffles.

  He took the coffee in a mug left over from his LAPD homicide days. Printed around its circumference was Our Day Begins When Your Day Ends. And he learned that eating waffles without syrup or other additives made them portable. He sat down at the dining room table and ate them by hand while sorting through the mail that had accumulated on the table. It was an easy process because four out of every five pieces were junk mail that he could easily identify without opening them. He put these in a pile to the left and the mail he would have to open and deal with to the right. This included pieces of correspondence addressed to his neighbors but mistakenly stuffed into his box.

  He was halfway through the pile when he came to an 8 x 5 padded manila envelope with a heavy object in it. There was no return address and his own address was scrawled in an unsteady hand. The envelope had a South Pasadena postmark. He opened it and slid out the object, a gold pen he immediately recognized. It now had a cap but he knew it was Whitney Vance’s. There were also two separately folded pieces of stationery of a high-grade pale yellow stock. Bosch unfolded the first one and found himself looking at a handwritten letter to him from Whitney Vance. The stationery had Vance’s name and the San Rafael Avenue address printed across the bottom.

  The letter had the previous Wednesday’s date on it. The day after Bosch had gone to Pasadena to meet Vance.

  Detective Bosch,

  If you are reading this then my most loyal and trusted Ida has been successful in getting this envelope to you. I am placing my trust in you as I have done with her for many decades.

  It was a pleasure to meet you yesterday and I can sense that you are an honorable man who will do what is right in any circumstance. I am counting on your integrity. No matter what happens to me I want you
to continue your search. If there is an heir to what I have on this earth then I want that person to have what is mine. I want you to find that person and I trust that you will. It gives an old man a sense of redemption to know he has done the right thing at last.

  Be safe. Be vigilant and determined.

  Whitney P. Vance

  October 5, 2016

  Bosch reread the letter before unfolding the second document. It was handwritten in the same shaky but legible scrawl as the first.

  Whitney Vance Last

  Will and Testament

  October 5, 2016

  I, Whitney Vance, of Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California, write this Will by hand to declare my desires for the disposition of my estate after my death. As of the date of this Will, I am of sound mind and am entirely capable of determining my own affairs. I am not married. By this Will I expressly revoke any and all previous, antecedent Wills and Codicils, declaring any and all to be null, void, and invalid.

  I have currently employed the investigative services of Hieronymus Bosch to ascertain and locate my issue and the heir of my body conceived in spring 1950 by Vibiana Duarte and born of her in due course. I charged Mr. Bosch to bring forward the heir of my body, with reasonably sufficient genealogical and scientific proof of heredity and genetic descent, so that the heir of my body may receive my estate.

  I appoint Hieronymus Bosch sole executor of this, my Will. No bond or other security shall be required of Mr. Bosch as executor of my Will. He shall pay my just debts and obligations, which shall include a reasonably generous fee for his service.