Echo Park

by Michael Connelly

  “I hope so.”

  She sounded depressed and Bosch didn’t know what to say. Fourteen years earlier, when he had been about her age, Bosch had woken up in the hospital after taking a bullet in his left shoulder. He still remembered the screaming pain that had set in every time the morphine started to wear off.

  “I brought the papers,” he said. “You want me to read ’em to you?”

  “Yeah. Nothing good, I suppose.”

  “No, nothing good.”

  He held the Times front page up so she could see the mug shot of Waits. He then read the lead story and then the sidebar. When he was finished he looked over at her. She looked distressed.

  “You okay?”

  “You should’ve left me, Harry, and gone after him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In the woods. You could’ve gotten him. Instead you saved me. Now look at the shit you’re in.”

  “It comes with the territory, Kiz. The only thing I could think about out there was getting you to the hospital. I feel really guilty about everything.”

  “What exactly do you have to feel guilty about?”

  “A lot. When I came out of retirement last year I made you leave the chief’s office and partner with me again. You wouldn’t have been there yesterday if I—”

  “Oh, please! Would you shut your fucking mouth!”

  He didn’t remember ever hearing her use such language. He did what she told him.

  “Just shut up,” she said. “No more of that. What else did you bring me?”

  Bosch held up the copy of the Gesto murder book.

  “Oh, nothing. I brought this for me. To read if you were asleep or something. It’s the copy of the Gesto file I made back when I retired the first time.”

  “So what are you going to do with that?”

  “Like I said, I was just going to read it. I keep thinking there’s something we missed.”

  “‘We’?”

  “Me. Something I missed. I’ve been listening a lot lately to a recording of Coltrane and Monk playing together at Carnegie Hall. It was right there in the Carnegie archives for like fifty years until somebody found it. The thing is, the guy who found it had to know their sound to know what they had in that box in the archives.”

  “And that relates to the file how?”

  Bosch smiled. She was in a hospital bed with two bullet wounds and she was still giving him shit.

  “I don’t know. I keep thinking there’s something in here and I’m the only one who can find it.”

  “Good luck. Why don’t you sit on that chair and read your file. I think I’m going to go to sleep for a while.”

  “Okay, Kiz. I’ll be quiet.”

  He pulled the chair away from the wall and brought it closer to the bed. As he sat down she spoke again.

  “I’m not coming back, Harry.”

  He looked at her. It was not what he wanted to hear but he wouldn’t object. Not now, at least.

  “Whatever you want, Kiz.”

  “Sheila, my old girl, was just visiting. She saw the news and came in. She says she’ll take care of me until I get better. But she doesn’t want me going back to the cops.”

  Which explained why she hadn’t wanted to talk to Bosch out in the hallway.

  “That was always a point of contention with us, you know?”

  “I remember you told me. Look, you don’t have to tell me any of this stuff now.”

  “It’s not just Sheila, though. It’s me. I shouldn’t be a cop. I proved that yesterday.”

  “What are you talking about? You are one of the best cops I know.”

  He saw a tear roll down her cheek.

  “I froze out there, Harry. I fucking froze and I let him . . . just shoot me.”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Kiz.”

  “Those men are dead because of me. When he grabbed Olivas, I couldn’t move. I just watched. I should have put him down, but I just stood there. I just stood there and I let him shoot me next. Instead of raising my gun I raised my hand.”

  “No, Kiz. You didn’t have an angle on him. If you had fired you might have hit Olivas. After that it was too late.”

  He hoped she understood that he was telling her what to say when the OIS came around.

  “No, I have to own up to it. I—”

  “Kiz, you want to quit, that’s fine. I’ll back you one hundred percent. But I won’t back you on this other shit. You understand?”

  She tried to turn her face away from him but the bandages on her neck prevented her from turning.

  “Okay,” she said.

  More tears came down and Bosch knew that she had wounds that were far deeper than those in her neck and hand.

  “You know, you should have gone up top,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Out there with the ladder. If you had been up top instead of me none of this would’ve happened. Because you wouldn’t have hesitated, Harry. You would’ve blown his shit away.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “Nobody knows how they’re going to react in a situation until they’re in that situation.”

  “I froze.”

  “Look, go to sleep, Kiz. Get better and then make your decision. If you don’t come back I will understand. But I’m always going to be your backup, Kiz. No matter what happens and where you go.”

  She used her left hand to wipe her face.

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  She closed her eyes and he watched as she finally gave it up. She mumbled something he couldn’t understand and then was asleep. Bosch watched her for a while and thought about not having her as a partner anymore. They had worked well together, like family. He would miss it.

  He didn’t want to think about the future right now. He opened the murder book and decided to start reading about the past. He started from page one, the initial crime report.

  A few minutes later he had it covered and was about to turn to the witness reports when his phone began vibrating in his pocket. He walked out of the room to answer the call in the hallway. It was Lieutenant Randolph from the Officer Involved Shooting Unit.

  “Sorry we’re holding you off active while we take our time with this thing,” he said.

  “It’s all right. I know why.”

  “Yeah, a lot of pressure.”

  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d take a ride down here to Parker Center and look at this videotape we’ve got.”

  “You have the tape from O’Shea’s cameraman?”

  There was a pause before Randolph answered.

  “We have a tape from him, yes. I’m not sure it’s a complete tape and that’s what I want you to look at. You know, tell us what might be missing. Can you come down?”

  “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “Good. I’ll be waiting. How’s your partner?”

  Bosch wondered if Randolph knew where he was.

  “She’s still hanging in. I’m at the hospital now but she’s still out of it.”

  He hoped to delay Rider’s OIS interview as long as possible. In a few days, once she was off the painkillers and clear of mind, maybe she’d think better of volunteering that she had frozen when Waits made his move.

  “We’re waiting to hear when we can interview her,” Randolph said.

  “Probably be a few days, I would think.”

  “Probably. Anyway, see you soon. Thanks for coming down.”

  Bosch closed the phone and went back into the room. He picked the murder book up off the chair where he had left it and checked on his partner. She was asleep. He quietly left the room.

  He made good time on the drive in and called Rachel to tell her that lunch looked good, since he was already going to be downtown. They agreed to go fancy and she said she would make a reservation at the Water Grill for noon. He said he would see her there.

  The OIS squad was on the third floor at Parker Cente
r. It was at the opposite end of the building from the Robbery-Homicide Division. Randolph had a private office with video equipment set up on a stand. He was sitting behind the desk, while Osani was working with the equipment and getting ready to play the tape. Randolph motioned Bosch to the only other seat.

  “When did you get the tape?” Bosch asked.

  “It was delivered this morning. Corvin said it took him twenty-four hours to remember he had put it in one of those cargo pockets you mentioned. This, of course, came after I had reminded him I had a witness who saw the tape go in the pocket.”

  “And you think it’s been doctored?”

  “We’ll know for sure after I give it to SID but, yeah, it’s been edited. We found his camera at the crime scene, and Osani here was bright enough to write down the number on the counter. When you roll this tape the counter on the tape doesn’t match. About two minutes of tape are missing. Why don’t you roll it, Reggie.”

  Osani started the tape and Bosch watched as it began with the huddle of investigators and techs in the Sunset Ranch parking lot. Corvin had stayed close to O’Shea at all times and there was an uninterrupted flow of raw video footage which seemed to always keep the candidate for district attorney at center. This continued as the group followed Waits into the woods and until they all stopped at the top of the steep drop-off. Then it was clear there was a cut where it was to be presumed that Corvin had turned the camera off and then back on again. There was no discussion on the tape of whether the handcuffs should be removed from Waits’s wrists. The video cut from Kiz Rider saying they could use the SID ladder to Cafarelli returning to the spot with the ladder.

  Osani stopped the tape so they could discuss it.

  “It’s likely that he did stop the camera while we were waiting for the ladder,” Bosch said. “That probably took ten minutes max. But he probably didn’t stop it until after the back and forth about the cuffs on Waits.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m just assuming. But I wasn’t watching Corvin. I was watching Waits.”

  “Right.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I don’t want you to give me anything that wasn’t there.”

  “Did any of the other witnesses back me on this? Did they say they heard the discussion about uncuffing him?”

  “Cafarelli, the SID tech, heard it. Corvin said he didn’t and O’Shea said it never happened. So you got two from the LAPD saying yes and two from the DA’s office saying no. And no tape to back it up either way. Classic pissing match.”

  “What about Maury Swann?”

  “He’d be the tiebreaker except he’s not talking to us. Says it is in his client’s best interest to remain mute.”

  That didn’t surprise Bosch, coming from a defense lawyer.

  “Is there another edit you wanted to show me?”

  “Possibly. Go ahead, Reggie.”

  Osani started the video again and it took them through the descent on the ladder and then to the clearing where Cafarelli methodically used the probe to mark the location of the body. The shot was uninterrupted. Corvin simply turned the camera on and shot everything, probably with the idea that he would edit it later if the tape was ever needed in a court hearing. Or possibly a campaign documentary.

  The tape continued and documented the group’s return to the ladder. Rider and Olivas went up to the top and Waits was uncuffed by Bosch. But as the prisoner started his climb up the ladder, the tape cut off just as he reached the upper rungs and Olivas was leaning down to grab him.

  “That’s it?” Bosch asked.

  “That’s it,” Randolph said.

  “I remember after the shooting, when I told Corvin to leave the camera and come up the ladder to help with Kiz, he had it on his shoulder. He was rolling.”

  “Yeah, well, we asked about why the tape ended and he claimed that he thought he was going to run short on tape. He wanted to keep some for when the diggers came in and excavated the body. So he turned the camera off when Waits was going up the ladder.”

  “That make sense to you?”

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “Nope. I think that’s bullshit. He had the whole thing on tape.”

  “That’s just an opinion.”

  “Whatever,” Bosch said. “The question is, why cut the tape at this point? What was on it?”

  “You tell me. You were there.”

  “I told you everything I could remember.”

  “Well, you better remember more. You’re not in such good shape here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s no discussion on the tape of whether the man should or shouldn’t be cuffed. What is on the tape is Olivas uncuffing him for the climb down and you uncuffing him for the climb back up.”

  Bosch realized that Randolph was right and that the tape made him look like he had uncuffed Waits without even discussing it with the others.

  “O’Shea’s setting me up.”

  “I don’t know if anyone is setting anyone up. Let me ask you something. When the shit hit the fan out there and Waits grabbed the gun and started shooting, do you remember seeing O’Shea at that point?”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “I ended up on the ground with Olivas on top of me. I was worried about where Waits was, not O’Shea. I don’t know where O’Shea was. All I can tell you is that he wasn’t in my picture. He was behind me somewhere.”

  “Maybe that’s what Corvin had on the tape. O’Shea running away like a coward.”

  Randolph’s use of the word coward sparked something in Bosch.

  He now remembered. From on top of the embankment Waits had called someone, presumably O’Shea, a coward. Bosch remembered hearing the sound of running behind him. O’Shea had run.

  Bosch thought about this. First of all, O’Shea had no weapon with which to protect himself from the man he was going to put in prison for life. By all rights, running from the gun would not be unexpected or unreasonable. It would have been an act of self-preservation, not cowardice. But since O’Shea was a candidate for top prosecutor in the county, running away under any circumstances would probably not look so good—especially if it was on video on the six o’clock news.

  “I remember now,” Bosch said. “Waits called somebody a coward for running. It must’ve been O’Shea.”

  “Mystery solved,” Randolph said.

  Bosch turned back to the monitor.

  “Can we back it up and look at that last part again?” he asked. “Just before it cuts off, I mean.”

  Osani worked the video and they watched it silently from the moment Waits was uncuffed for the second time.

  “Can you stop it right before the cut?” Bosch asked.

  Osani froze the image on the screen. It showed Waits past the halfway point on the ladder and Olivas reaching down to grab him. The angle of Olivas’s body had caused his windbreaker to fall open. Bosch could see his pistol in a pancake holster on his left hip, grips out so that he could take the gun with an across-the-body pull.

  Bosch stood up and walked to the monitor. He took out a pen and tapped it on the screen.

  “You notice that?” he said. “It looks like he’s got the snap on his holster open.”

  Randolph and Osani studied the screen. The safety snap was something they obviously hadn’t noticed before.

  “Could’ve been that he wanted to be ready if the prisoner made a move,” Osani said. “It’s within regs.”

  Neither Bosch nor Randolph responded. Whether it fell within department regulations or not, it was a curiosity that could not be explained, since Olivas was dead.

  “You can turn it off, Reg,” Randolph finally said.

  “No, can you show it one more time?” Bosch asked. “Just this part at the ladder.”

  Randolph nodded to Osani and the tape was backed up and replayed. Bosch tried to use the images on the monitor to build momentum and carry him into his own memory of what happened when Waits got to the top
. He remembered looking up and watching Olivas being swung around so that his back was to those below and there was no clear shot at Waits. He now remembered wondering where Kiz was and why she wasn’t reacting.

  Then there were shots and Olivas was falling backwards down the ladder toward him. Bosch raised his hands to try to lessen the impact. On the ground with Olivas on top of him he heard more shots and then the yelling.

  The yelling. Forgotten in all the adrenaline rush and panic. Waits had come to the precipice and fired down at them. And he had yelled. He called O’Shea a coward for running. But he had said more than just that.

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

  Bosch had forgotten the taunt in the commotion and confusion of the shooting, escape and effort to save Kiz Rider. In the charge of fear that came with those moments.

  What did that mean? What was Waits saying by calling the agreement a “bullshit deal”?

  “What is it?” Randolph asked.

  Bosch looked at him, coming out of his thoughts.

  “Nothing. I was just trying to concentrate on what happened during the moments where there’s no tape.”

  “It looked like you remembered something.”

  “I just remembered how close I came to getting killed like Olivas and Doolan. Olivas landed on me. He ended up shielding me.”

  Randolph nodded.

  Bosch wanted to get out of there. He wanted to take his discovery—“How’s your bullshit deal looking now?”—and work it. He wanted to grind it down to a powder and analyze it under the microscope.

  “Lieutenant, you have anything else for me right now?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Then I’m going to go. Call me if you need me.”

  “You call me when you remember what you can’t remember.”

  He gave Bosch a knowing look. Bosch looked away.

  “Right.”

  Bosch left the OIS office and went out to the elevator lobby. He should have left the building then. But instead he pushed the button to go up.

  21

  REMEMBERING WHAT WAITS had yelled changed things. To Bosch it meant something had been going on up there in Beachwood Canyon and it was something he’d had no clue about. His first thought now was to retreat and consider everything before making a move. But the appointment at OIS had given him a reason to be in Parker Center and he planned to make the most of it before leaving.