Echo Park

by Michael Connelly

  “He’s right. Forensics has a ladder on top of the truck,” Rider said. “We get it, put it down on the incline and go up and down on it like stairs. Simple.”

  Swann broke into the huddle.

  “Simple, except my client is not going up and down that slope or up and down a ladder with his hands chained to his waist,” he said.

  After a momentary pause everyone looked at O’Shea.

  “I think we can work something out,” he said.

  “Wait a minute,” Olivas said. “We’re not taking the—”

  “Then he’s not going down there,” Swann said. “It’s that simple. I’m not allowing you to endanger him. He’s my client and my responsibility to him is not only in the arena of the law but in all—”

  O’Shea held his hands up in a calming manner.

  “One of our responsibilities is the safety of the accused,” he said. “Maury makes a point. If Mr. Waits falls going down the ladder without being able to use his hands, then we’re responsible. And then we’ve got a problem. I am sure that with all of you people holding guns and shotguns, we can control this situation for the ten seconds it takes him to go down a ladder.”

  “I’ll go get the ladder,” said the forensic tech. “Can you hold this?”

  Her name was Carolyn Cafarelli and Bosch knew most people called her Cal. She handed the gas probe, a yellow T-shaped device, to Bosch and started back through the woods.

  “I’ll help her with it,” Rider said.

  “No,” Bosch said. “Everybody carrying a weapon stays with Waits.”

  Rider nodded, realizing he was right.

  “I can handle it,” Cafarelli called out. “It’s lightweight aluminum.”

  “I just hope she can find her way back,” O’Shea said after she was gone.

  For the first few minutes they waited in silence, then Waits spoke to Bosch.

  “Anxious, Detective?” he asked. “Now that we’re so close.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. He wasn’t going to let Waits get inside his head.

  Waits tried again.

  “I think about all the cases you have worked. How many are like this one? How many are like Marie? I bet she—”

  “Waits, shut the fuck up,” Olivas commanded.

  “Ray, please,” Swann said in a soothing voice.

  “Just making conversation with the detective.”

  “Well, make it with yourself,” Olivas said.

  The silence returned until a few minutes later, when they all heard the sound of Cafarelli carrying the ladder through the woods. She banged it a few times on low-level limbs but finally got it to their position. Bosch helped her slide it down the slope and they made sure it was steady on the steep incline. When he stood up and turned back to the group Bosch saw that Olivas was uncuffing one of Waits’s hands from the chain running around the prisoner’s waist. He left the other hand secured.

  “The other hand, Detective,” Swann said.

  “He can climb with one hand free,” Olivas insisted.

  “I am sorry, Detective, but I am not going to allow that. He has to be able to hold on and break a fall if he happens to slip. He needs both hands free.”

  “He can do it with one.”

  While the posturing and debate continued, Bosch swung himself onto the ladder and went down the slope backwards. The ladder was steady. At the bottom he looked around and realized that there was no discernible path. From this point the trail to Marie Gesto’s body was not as obvious as it had been above. He looked back up at the others and waited.

  “Freddy, just do it,” O’Shea instructed in an annoyed tone. “Deputy, you go down first and be ready with that shotgun in case Mr. Waits gets any ideas. Detective Rider, you have my permission to unholster your weapon. You stay up here with Freddy and be ready as well.”

  Bosch climbed back up a few steps on the ladder so the deputy could carefully hand him the shotgun. He then stepped back down and the uniformed man came down the ladder. Bosch gave him back the weapon and returned to the ladder.

  “Toss me the cuffs,” Bosch called up to Olivas.

  Bosch caught the cuffs and then took a position two rungs up on the ladder. Waits began to go down while the videographer stood at the edge and recorded his descent. When Waits was three rungs from the bottom Bosch reached up and grabbed the waist chain to guide him the rest of the way to the lower ground.

  “This is it, Ray,” he whispered in his ear from behind. “Your only chance. You sure you don’t want to make a run for it?”

  Safely at the bottom, Waits stepped off the ladder and turned to Bosch, holding his hands up for the cuffs. His eyes held on Bosch’s.

  “No, Detective, I think I like living too much.”

  “I thought so.”

  Bosch cuffed his hands to the waist chain and looked back up the slope at the others.

  “Okay, we’re secure.”

  One by one the others came down the ladder. Once they had regrouped at the bottom O’Shea looked around and saw that there was no longer a path. They could go in any direction.

  “Okay, which way?” he said to Waits.

  Waits turned in a half circle as if seeing the area for the first time.

  “Ummmm . . .”

  Olivas almost lost it.

  “You better not be pulling—”

  “That way,” Waits said coyly as he nodded to the right of the slope. “Lost my bearings there for a second.”

  “No bullshit, Waits,” Olivas said. “You take us to the body right now or we go back, go to trial and you get the hot shot of Jesus juice you’ve got coming. You got that?”

  “I got it. And like I said, this way.”

  The group moved off through the brush with Waits leading the way, Olivas clinging to the chain at the small of his back and the shotgun never more than five feet behind.

  The ground on this level was softer and more muddy. Bosch knew that runoff from last spring’s rains had likely gone down the slope and collected here. He felt his thigh muscles begin to tighten as every step was a labor to pull his work boots from the sucking mud.

  In five minutes they came to a small clearing shaded by a tall, fully mature oak. Bosch saw Waits looking up and followed his eyes. A yellowish-white hair band hung limply from an overhead branch.

  “It’s funny,” Waits said. “It used to be blue.”

  Bosch knew that at the time of Marie Gesto’s disappearance she was believed to have had her hair tied back with a blue hair band known as a scrunchy. A friend who had seen her earlier on that last day had provided a description of what she was wearing. The scrunchy was not with the clothing found neatly folded in her car at the High Tower Apartments.

  Bosch looked up at the hair band. Thirteen years of rain and exposure had taken its color.

  Bosch lowered his eyes to Waits, and the killer was waiting for him with a smile.

  “We’re here, Detective. You’ve finally found Marie.”

  “Where?”

  Waits’s smile broadened.

  “You’re standing on her.”

  Bosch abruptly stepped back a pace and Waits laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Detective Bosch, I don’t think she minds. What was it the great man wrote about sleeping the big sleep? About not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell?”

  Bosch looked at him for a long moment, wondering once again about the literary airs of the window washer. Waits seemed to read him.

  “I’ve been in jail since May, Detective. I’ve done a lot of reading.”

  “Step back,” Bosch said.

  Waits opened his cuffed hands in a surrender move and stepped toward the trunk of the oak. Bosch looked at Olivas.

  “You got him?”

  “I got him.”

  Bosch looked down at the ground. He had left footprints in the muddy earth but it also looked like there was another, recent disturbance in the soil. It looked as though an animal had made a small dig in the ground, either foraging
or burying its own dead. Bosch signaled the forensics tech over to the center of the clearing. Cafarelli stepped forward with the gas probe and Bosch pointed to the spot directly below the colorless hair band. The tech pushed the point of the probe into the soft soil and easily sank it a foot into the earth. She clicked on the reader and began studying the electronic display. Bosch stepped toward her to look over her shoulder. He knew that the probe measured the level of methane in the soil. A buried body releases methane gas as it decomposes. Even a body wrapped in plastic.

  “We’re getting a read,” Cafarelli said. “We’re above normal levels.”

  Bosch nodded. He felt strange inside. Out of sorts. He had been with the case for more than a decade and a part of him liked holding on to the mystery of Marie Gesto. But, while he didn’t believe in something called closure, he did believe in the need to know the truth. He felt that the truth was about to reveal itself, and yet it was disconcerting. He needed to know the truth to move on, but how could he move on once he no longer needed to find and avenge Marie Gesto?

  He looked at Waits.

  “How far down is she?”

  “Not too far,” Waits replied matter-of-factly. “Back in ’ninety-three we were in drought, remember? The ground was hard and, man, I wore my ass out digging a hole for her. I was lucky she was just a little thing. But, anyway, that’s why I changed it up. No more digging big holes for me after that.”

  Bosch looked away from him and back at Cafarelli. She was taking another probe reading. She would be able to delineate the grave site by charting the highest methane readings.

  They all watched the grim work silently. After taking several readings in a grid pattern Cafarelli finally moved her hand in a north-south sweep to indicate how the body was likely positioned. She then marked the limits of the grave site by dragging the point of the probe in the dirt. When she was finished she had marked out a rectangle about six feet by two feet. It was a small grave for a small victim.

  “Okay,” O’Shea said. “Let’s get Mr. Waits back and secured in the car and then bring in the excavation group.”

  The prosecutor told Cafarelli that she should stay at the site so there would be no crime scene integrity issues. The rest of the group headed back toward the ladder. Bosch was last in the single-file line, his mind deep in thought about the ground they were traversing. There was something sacred about it. It was hallowed ground. He hoped that Waits had not lied to them. He hoped that Marie Gesto had not been forced to make the walk to her grave while alive.

  At the ladder Rider and Olivas went up first. Bosch then walked Waits to the ladder, uncuffed him and started him up.

  As the killer climbed, the deputy trained the shotgun, finger on the trigger, on his back. In that moment, Bosch realized he could slip on the muddy soil, fall into the deputy and possibly cause the shotgun to discharge and hit Waits with the deadly fusillade. He looked away from the temptation and up at the top of the sheer facing. His partner was looking down at him with eyes that told him she had just read his thoughts. Bosch tried to put an innocent look on his face. He spread his hands while mouthing the word What?

  Rider shook her head with disapproval and moved back from the edge. Bosch noticed that she was holding her weapon at her side. As Waits got to the top of the ladder, he was welcomed by Olivas with opened arms.

  “Hands,” Olivas said.

  “Certainly, Detective.”

  From Bosch’s angle below he could only see Waits’s back. He could tell by his posture that he had brought his hands together at his front for recuffing to the waist chain.

  But then there was a sudden movement. A quick twist in the prisoner’s posture as he leaned too far into Olivas. Bosch instinctively knew something was wrong. Waits was going for the gun holstered on Olivas’s hip under the windbreaker.

  “Hey!” Olivas shouted in panic. “Hey!”

  But before Bosch or anyone else could react, Waits used his hold and leverage on Olivas to spin their bodies so that the detective’s back was now at the top of the ladder. The deputy had no angle for a shot. Neither did Bosch. With a pistonlike move, Waits raised his knee and drove it twice into Olivas’s crotch. Olivas started to collapse, and there were two quick gunshots, muffled by his body. Waits pushed the detective off the edge and Olivas came crashing down the ladder onto Bosch.

  Waits then disappeared from view.

  Olivas’s weight took Bosch down hard into the mud. As he struggled to pull his weapon Bosch heard two more shots from above and shouts of panic from those on the lower ground. Behind him he heard the sound of running. With Olivas still on top of him, he looked up but could not see Waits or Rider. Then the prisoner appeared at the edge of the precipice, calmly holding a gun. He fired down at them and Bosch felt two impacts on Olivas’s body. He had become Bosch’s shield.

  The blast of the deputy’s shotgun split the air but the slug thwacked into the trunk of an oak tree to the left of Waits. Waits returned fire at the same moment and Bosch heard the deputy go down like a dropped suitcase.

  “Run, you coward!” Waits yelled. “How’s your bullshit deal looking now?”

  He fired twice more indiscriminately into the woods below. Bosch managed to free his gun and fire up the ladder at Waits.

  Waits ducked back out of sight as he used his free hand to grab the ladder by the top rung and yank it up to the top of the embankment. Bosch pushed Olivas’s body off and got up, his gun aimed and ready for Waits to show again.

  But then he heard the sound of running from above and he knew Waits was gone.

  “Kiz!” Bosch yelled.

  There was no reply. Bosch quickly checked both Olivas and the deputy but saw they were both dead. He holstered his weapon and scrambled up the incline, using exposed roots as handholds. The ground gave way as he dug his feet into it. A root snapped in his hand and he slid back down.

  “Kiz, talk to me!”

  Again no response. He tried again, this time going at an angle across the steep incline instead of by a straight-up assault. Grabbing roots and kicking his feet into the soft facing, he finally made it to the top and crawled over the edge. As he pulled himself up, he saw Waits moving off through the trees in the direction of the clearing, where the others waited. He pulled his gun again and fired five more shots but Waits never slowed.

  Bosch got up, ready to give chase. But then he saw his partner’s body lying crumpled and bloody in the nearby brush.

  16

  KIZ RIDER WAS FACEUP, clutching her neck with one hand while the other lay limp at her side. Her eyes were wide and searching but not focusing. It was as if she were blind. Her limp arm was so bloody it took a moment for Bosch to spot the bullet entrance in the palm of her hand, just below the thumb. It was a through-and-through shot and he knew it wasn’t as serious as the neck wound. Blood was steadily seeping from between her fingers. The bullet must have hit the carotid artery, and Bosch knew that blood loss or depletion of oxygen in the brain could kill his partner in minutes, if not seconds.

  “Okay, Kiz,” he said as he knelt next to her. “I’m here.”

  He could see that her left hand, holding the wound on the right side of her neck, was creating insufficient pressure to stop the bleeding. She was losing the strength to hold on.

  “Let me take over here,” he said.

  He moved his hand under hers and pressed against what he now realized were two wounds, bullet entry and exit. He could feel the blood pulsing against his palm.

  “O’Shea!” he shouted.

  “Bosch?” O’Shea called back from below the drop-off. “Where is he? Did you kill him?”

  “He’s gone. I need you to get on Doolan’s rover and get us a medevac up here. Now!”

  It took a moment before O’Shea responded, in a panicked voice.

  “Doolan’s shot! So is Freddy!”

  “They’re dead, O’Shea. You need to get on the radio. Rider is alive and we need to get her—”

  In the distance there were two gun
shots, followed by a shout. It was a female voice and Bosch thought about Kathy Kohl and the people up at the parking lot. There were two more shots and Bosch heard a change in the overhead sound of the helicopter. It was banking away. Waits was shooting at it.

  “Come on, O’Shea!” he shouted. “We’re running out of time.”

  When he heard nothing in response he brought Rider’s hand back up and pressed in against the neck wounds again.

  “Hold it there, Kiz. Press as hard as you can and I’ll be right back.”

  Bosch jumped up and grabbed the ladder Waits had pulled up. He lowered it back into place between the bodies of Olivas and Doolan and quickly climbed down. O’Shea was on his knees next to Olivas’s body. The prosecutor’s eyes were as wide and as blank as those of the dead cop next to him. Swann was standing in the lower clearing with a dazed look on his face. Cafarelli had come from the grave site and was on her knees next to Doolan, trying to turn him over to get to the radio. The deputy had fallen chest down after being shot by Waits.

  “Cal, let me do it,” Bosch ordered. “You go up and help Kiz. We’ve got to stop the bleeding from her neck.”

  Without a word the Forensics tech scurried up the ladder and out of sight. Bosch turned Doolan over and saw that he had been hit in the forehead. His eyes were open and looked surprised. Bosch grabbed the radio off Doolan’s equipment belt and made the “officer down” call and requested a medical airship and paramedics to the lower parking lot at Sunset Ranch. Once he was assured that medical help was on the way, he reported that an armed murder suspect had escaped custody. He gave a detailed description of Raynard Waits, then shoved the radio into his belt. He went to the ladder and as he climbed back up he called down to O’Shea, Swann and the videographer, who was still holding the camera up and recording the scene.

  “All of you get up here. We need to carry her out to the parking lot for the evac.”

  O’Shea continued to look down in shock at Olivas.

  “They’re dead!” Bosch shouted from the top. “There’s nothing we can do for them. I need you up here.”

  He turned back to Rider. Cafarelli was holding her neck but Bosch could see that time was growing short. The life was leaving his partner’s eyes. Bosch bent down and grabbed and held her unhurt hand. He rubbed it between his two hands. He noticed that Cafarelli had used a hair band to wrap the wound on Rider’s other hand.