Harry Bosch Novels, The: Volume 2

by Michael Connelly

  “Come on, Artie, it’s probably just sitting in a file cabinet or something. It’ll take you thirty seconds.”

  “Would you leave me alone?” Donovan said with exasperation. “I’m serious, Harry. Yes, it’s sitting in a file and it would only take me half a minute to get it for you. But if I leave what I’m doing here, I could get crucified when I testify in this case. I can see it now, some shyster all righteous and angry and saying, ‘You are telling this jury that while in the middle of handling evidence from this case you got up and handled evidence from another?’ And you don’t have to be F. Lee Bailey anymore to make it sound good to a jury. Now leave me alone. Come back in a half hour.”

  “Fine, Artie, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “And buzz me when you come back. Don’t just come in. We gotta get that combination changed.”

  The last line he said more to himself than to Bosch.

  Bosch left the way he had come in and took the elevator down to go outside and have a smoke. He had to walk out to the curb and light up because it was now against departmental rules to stand outside the front door of Parker Center and smoke. So many cops working there were addicted to cigarettes that there had often been a crowd outside the building’s main doors and a permanent haze of blue smoke had begun to hang over the entrance. The chief thought this was unsightly and instituted the rule that if you left the building to smoke, you had to leave the property as well. Now the front sidewalk along Los Angeles Street often looked like the scene of a labor action, with cops, some even in uniform, pacing back and forth in front of the building. The only thing missing from the scene was picket signs. The word was that the police chief had consulted with the city attorney to see if he could outlaw smoking on the sidewalk as well, but he was told that the sidewalk was beyond the bounds of his control.

  As Bosch was lighting a second cigarette off the first, he saw the huge figure of FBI agent Roy Lindell waltzing leisurely out of the glass doors of the police headquarters. When he got to the sidewalk, he turned right and headed toward the federal courthouse. He was coming directly toward Bosch. Lindell didn’t see Bosch until he was a few feet away. It startled him.

  “What is this? Are you waiting for me?”

  “No, I’m having a cigarette, Lindell. What are you doing?”

  “None of your business.”

  He made a move to pass but Bosch stopped him with the next line.

  “Have a nice chat with Chastain?”

  “Look, Bosch, I was asked to come over and give a statement and I obliged. I told the truth. Let the chips fall.”

  “Trouble is you don’t know the truth.”

  “I know you found that gun and I didn’t put it there. That’s the truth.”

  “Part of it, at least.”

  “Well, it’s the only part I know, and that’s what I told him. So have a good day.”

  He passed by Bosch and Harry turned around to watch him go. Once again he stopped him.

  “You people might be satisfied with only part of the truth. But I’m not.”

  Lindell turned around and stepped back to Bosch.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it out.”

  “No, you tell me.”

  “We were all used, Lindell. I’m going to find out by who. When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Look, Bosch, you don’t have the case anymore. We’re working it and you better stay the fuck away from it.”

  “Yeah, you guys are working the case, all right,” Bosch said sarcastically. “I’m sure you’re pounding the pavement on this one. Let me know when you figure it out.”

  “Bosch, it’s not like that. We care about it.”

  “Give me one answer, Lindell.”

  “What?”

  “In the time you were under, did Tony Aliso ever bring his wife over there to make a pickup?”

  Lindell was quiet a moment while he decided whether to answer. He finally shook his head.

  “Not once,” he said. “Tony always said she hated the place. Too many bad memories, I guess.”

  Bosch tried to remain cool.

  “Memories of Vegas?”

  Lindell smiled.

  “For somebody who supposedly has all the answers, you don’t know much, do you, Bosch? Tony met her in the club something like twenty years ago. Long before my time. She was a dancer and Tony was going to make her a movie star. Same story he was using on ’em to the end. Only, after her I guess he got wise and learned not to marry every one of them.”

  “Did she know Joey Marks?”

  “Your one question is now up to three, Bosch.”

  “Did she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was her name back then?”

  “That’s another one I don’t know. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”

  He turned and walked away. Bosch threw his cigarette into the street and walked back toward the Glass House. A few minutes later, after being properly buzzed through the door into the SID offices, Bosch found Donovan at his desk again. The criminalist lifted a thin file from the desk and handed it to Harry.

  “You got copies in there,” he said. “Same thing I sent the bureau. What I did was shoot a copy of the negative and then shot the new negative and printed it in black-and-white contrast for comparison purposes. I also blew it up to actual size.”

  Bosch didn’t understand what Donovan had just said except for the last part. He opened the file. There were two pages of copy paper with the shoe prints in black. Both were partial prints of the same right shoe. But between the two partials almost all of the shoe was there. Donovan got up and looked at the open file. He pointed to a tread ridge on one of the copies. It was a curving line on the heel. But the line was broken.

  “Now, if you find the shooter and he still has the shoes, this is where you’ll get him. See how that line is broken there? That does not appear to be a manufacturer’s design. This guy stepped on glass or something at some point and it cut the tread there. It’s either that or a flaw in manufacturing. But if you find the shoe, we’ll be able to make an ID match that should send the boy away.”

  “Okay,” Bosch said, still looking at the copies. “Now, did you get anything even preliminary from the bureau on this?”

  “Not really. I’ve got a guy I go to pretty regularly with this kind of stuff. I know him, seen him at a couple of the SID conventions. Anyway, he called just to let me know he got the package and he’d get on it as soon as he could. He said that off the top of his head he thought it was one of those lightweight boots that are popular now. You know, they’re like work boots but they’re comfortable and wear like a pair of Nikes.”

  “Okay, Artie, thanks.”

  Bosch drove over to the County-USC Medical Center and around to the parking lot by the railroad yard. The coroner’s office was located at the far end of the medical center property, and Bosch went in through the back door after showing his badge to a security guard.

  He checked Dr. Salazar’s office first but it was empty. He then went down to the autopsy floor and looked in the first suite, where the lowered table that Salazar always used was located. Salazar was there, working on another body. Bosch stepped in and Salazar looked up from the open chest cavity of what looked like the remains of a young black man.

  “Harry, what are you doing here? This is a South Bureau case.”

  “I wanted to ask about the Aliso case.”

  “Kind of got my hands full at the moment. And you shouldn’t be in here without a mask and gown.”

  “I know. You think you could have your assistant dub off a copy of the protocol for me?”

  “No problem. I heard the FBI took an interest in the case, Harry. Is that true?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Funny thing, those agents didn’t bother talking to me. They just came in and got a copy of the protocol. The protocol only has conclusions, none of the ruminating we doctors like to do.”

 
; “So what would you have ruminated about with them if they had talked to you?”

  “I would have told them my hunch, Harry.”

  “Which is?”

  Salazar looked up from the body but kept his rubber-gloved and bloody hands over the open chest so they wouldn’t drip on anything else.

  “My hunch is that you’re looking for a woman.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The material in and below the eyes.”

  “Preparation H?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind. What did you find?”

  “The substance was analyzed and it came back oleo capsicum. Found it on the nasal swabs, too. Know what oleo capsicum is better known as, Harry?”

  “Pepper spray.”

  “Shit, Harry, you ruin my fun.”

  “Sorry. So somebody sprayed him with pepper spray?”

  “Right again. That’s why I think it’s a woman. Someone who was either having problems controlling him or afraid of problems. That makes me think it’s a woman. Besides, all these women around here, they all carry that stuff in their purses.”

  Bosch wondered if Veronica Aliso was one of those women.

  “That’s good, Sally. Anything else?”

  “No surprises. Tests came back clean.”

  “No amyl nitrate?”

  “Nope, but that has a short retention. We don’t find it that often. Did you get anywhere with the slugs?”

  “Yeah, we did all right. Can you call your guy?”

  “Take me to the intercom.”

  While Salazar held his hands up in front of himself so they wouldn’t touch anything, Bosch pushed his wheelchair to the nearby counter, where there was a phone with an intercom attachment. Salazar told Bosch which button to push and then ordered someone to make a copy of the protocol immediately for Bosch.

  “Thanks,” Bosch said.

  “No problem. Hope it helps. Remember, look for a woman who carries pepper spray in her purse. Not Mace. Pepper spray.”

  “Right.”

  The end-of-the-week traffic was intense and it took Bosch nearly an hour to get out of downtown and back to Hollywood. When he got to the Cat & Fiddle pub on Sunset it was after six, and as he walked through the gate he saw Edgar and Rider already sitting at a table in the open-air courtyard. There was a pitcher of beer on their table. And they weren’t alone. Sitting at the table with them was Grace Billets.

  The Cat & Fiddle was a popular drinking spot with the Hollywood cops because it was only a few blocks from the station on Wilcox. So Bosch didn’t know as he approached the table whether Billets happened to be there by coincidence or because she knew of their freelance operation.

  “Howdy, folks,” Bosch said as he sat down.

  There was one empty glass on the table and he filled it from the pitcher. He then held the glass up to the others and toasted to the end of another week.

  “Harry,” Rider said, “the lieutenant knows what we’ve been doing. She’s here to help.”

  Bosch nodded and slowly looked at Billets.

  “I’m disappointed that you didn’t come to me first,” she said. “But I understand what you are doing. I agree that it might be in the bureau’s best interest to let this lie and not endanger their case. But a man was murdered. If they’re not going to look for the killer, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

  Bosch nodded. He was almost speechless. He’d never had a boss who wasn’t a rigid by-the-book man. Grace Billets was a major change.

  “Of course,” she said, “we have to be very careful. We screw this up and we’ll have more than just the FBI mad at us.”

  The unspoken message was that their careers were at stake here.

  “Well, my position’s already pretty much shot,” Bosch said. “So if anything goes wrong, I want you all to lay it on me.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Rider said.

  “No, it’s not. You all are going places. I’m not going anywhere. Hollywood is it for me and all of us here know it. So if this thing hits the fan, back out. I’ll take the heat. If you can’t agree to that, I want you to back out now.”

  There was silence for a few moments, and then one by one the other three nodded.

  “Okay, then,” he said, “you may have told the lieutenant what you’ve been doing, but I’d like to hear it myself.”

  “We’ve come up with a few things, not a lot,” Rider said. “Jerry went up the hill to see Nash while I worked the computer and talked to a friend at the Times. First off, I ran Tony Aliso’s TRW credit report and got Veronica’s Social Security number off that. I then ran that through the Department of Social Security computer to try and get a work history and found out that Veronica is not her real name. The Social comes back to Jennifer Gilroy, born forty-one years ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. No wonder she said she hated Vegas. She grew up there.”

  “Any work history?”

  “Nothing until she came out here and worked for TNA Productions.”

  “What else?”

  Before she could answer, there was a loud commotion near the glass door to the interior bar. The door opened and a large man in a bartender’s jacket pushed a smaller man through. The smaller man was disheveled and drunk and yelling something about the lack of respect he was getting. The bartender roughly walked him to the courtyard gate and pushed him through. As soon as the bartender turned to go back to the bar, the drunk spun around and started back in. The bartender turned around and pushed him so hard he fell backward onto the seat of his pants. Now embarrassed, he threatened to come back and get the bartender. A few people at some of the outside tables snickered. The drunk got up and staggered out to the street.

  “They start early around here,” Billets said. “Go ahead, Kiz.”

  “Anyway, I did an NCIC run. Jennifer Gilroy got picked up twice in Vegas for soliciting. This is going back more than twenty years. I called over there and had them ship us the mugs and reports. It’s all on fiche and they have to dig it out, so we won’t get it till next week. There probably won’t be much there, anyway. According to the computer, neither case went to court. She pleaded out and paid a fine each time.”

  Bosch nodded. It sounded like a routine disposal of routine cases.

  “That’s all I’ve got on that. As far as the Times goes, there was nothing on the search. And my friend at Variety didn’t do much better. Veronica Aliso was barely mentioned in the review of Casualty of Desire. Both she and the movie were panned, but I’d like to see it anyway. Do you still have the tape, Harry?”

  “On my desk.”

  “Does she get naked in it?” Edgar asked. “If she does, I’d like to see it, too.”

  He was ignored.

  “Okay, what else?” Rider said. “Uh, Veronica also got a couple mentions in stories about movie premieres and who attended. It wasn’t a lot. When you said she had fifteen minutes, I think you confused minutes with seconds. Anyway, that’s it from me. Jerry?”

  Edgar cleared his throat and explained that he had gone up to the gatehouse at Hidden Highlands and run into a problem when Nash insisted on a new search warrant to look at the complete gate log. Edgar said he then spent the afternoon typing up the search warrant and hunting for a judge who hadn’t left early for the weekend. He eventually was successful and had a signed warrant which he planned to deliver the next morning.

  “Kiz and I are goin’ up there in the morning. We’ll get a look at the gate log and then we’re probably going to hit some of the neighbors, do some interviews. Like you said, we’re hopin’ the widow will look out her window and catch our act, maybe get a little spooked. Maybe panic, make a mistake.”

  It was then Bosch’s turn, and he recounted his afternoon efforts, including his run-in with Roy Lindell and the agent’s recollection that Veronica Aliso had started her show business career as a stripper in Vegas. He also discussed Salazar’s finding that Tony Aliso had been hit in the face with a blast of pepper spray shortly before his death and shared the
deputy coroner’s hunch that it might have been a woman who sprayed him.

  “Does he think she could have pulled this off by herself after hitting him with the pepper spray?” Billets asked.

  “It doesn’t matter, because she wasn’t alone,” Bosch answered.

  He pulled his briefcase onto his lap and took out the copies of the shoe prints Donovan had recovered from the body and the bumper of the Rolls. He slid the pages to the middle of the table so the three others could look.

  “That’s a size eleven shoe. It belongs to a man, Artie says. A big man. So the woman, if she was there, could have sprayed him with the pepper, but this guy finished the job.”

  Bosch pointed to the shoe prints.

  “He put his foot right on the victim so he could lean in close and do the job point-blank. Very cool and very efficient. Probably a pro. Maybe someone she knew since her Vegas days.”

  “Probably the one who planted the gun in Vegas?” Billets asked.

  “That’s my guess.”

  Bosch had been keeping his eye on the front gate of the courtyard, just in case the drunk who had been tossed out decided to come back and make his point. But when he glanced over now, he didn’t see the drunk. He saw Officer Ray Powers, wearing mirrored glasses despite the lateness of the day, entering the courtyard and being met halfway across by the bartender. Waving his arms in an animated fashion, the bartender told the big cop about the drunk and the threats. Powers glanced around at the tables and saw Bosch and the others. When he had disengaged from the bartender he sauntered over.

  “So, the detective bureau brain trust takes five,” he said.

  “That’s right, Powers,” Edgar said. “I think the guy you’re looking for is out there pissing in the bushes.”

  “Yes, suh, I’ll jus’ go out there ’n’ fetch him, boss.”

  Powers looked around the table at the others with a satisfied smirk on his face. He saw the copies of the shoe prints on the table and pointed at them with his chin.

  “Is this what you dicks call an investigative strategy session? Well, I’ll give you a tip. Those there are what they call shoe prints.”

  He smiled at his remark, proud of it.