The Black Box hb-18

by Michael Connelly

  “She’s got five minutes to open up, or we cuff her, put her in a car, and then go in. I’m calling backup now.”

  Bosch pulled his cell phone out and walked into the scrub grass out in front so Briscoe could see him making the call.

  Gant started speaking in a low voice to the woman in the doorway, doing the Louis Gossett Jr. act, trying to sweet-talk his way to the prize.

  “Momma, you remember me? I came by here a few months back. They brought me along here to try to keep the peace, but there’s no stopping them. They’re coming in and they’re going to be looking through all your stuff. Opening things, gettin’ into your private things, gettin’ into whatever anybody else’s got in here. You want that?”

  “This is some bullshit. Tru been dead goin’ on three years and now they come around here? They haven’t even solved his damn murder and they sticking a warrant in my face?”

  “I know, Momma, I know, but you gotta think about yourself here. You don’t want these guys tearin’ up your house. Where’s the gun at? We know Tru had it. Just give it up and these guys will leave you be.”

  Bosch clicked off his phony call and started back toward the house.

  “That’s it, Jordy. Backup’s coming and time’s up.”

  Gant held a hand back with the palm up.

  “Hold on a sec, Detective, we’re talking here.”

  He then looked at Briscoe and tried one last time.

  “We’re talking, right? You want to avoid this whole thing, right? You don’t want your neighbors seeing this, you sittin’ cuffed in a car, now, do you?”

  He paused and Bosch paused and everybody waited.

  “Only you,” Briscoe finally said.

  She pointed through the gate at Gant.

  “That’s cool,” he said. “You going to lead me to it?”

  She unlocked the security gate and pushed it toward him.

  “Only you come in.”

  Gant looked back at Bosch and winked. He was in. He went through the doorway and Briscoe pulled the gate closed and locked it again.

  Bosch didn’t like that last part. He moved up the steps and looked in through the bars. Briscoe was leading Gant down a hallway toward the rear of the house. For the first time, he noticed a boy of about nine or ten sitting on a couch playing a handheld video game.

  “Jordy, you okay?” he called.

  Gant looked back and Bosch put his hands on the security gate’s handle and shook it to remind him that he was locked in and his backup was locked out.

  “We’re cool,” Gant called back. “Momma’s going to give it up. She doesn’t want you crackers tearing her place up.”

  He smiled as he disappeared from sight. Bosch stayed at the door, leaning close to it so he would hear any sound that might be trouble. He put the phony warrant—dummied off an old one—into his coat’s inside pocket to be used another day.

  He waited five minutes and heard nothing except the electronic beeps of the boy’s game. He assumed that the kid was Trumont Story’s child.

  “Hey, Jordy?” he finally called out.

  The boy didn’t look away from his game. There was no reply.

  “Jordy?”

  Again no reply. Bosch tried the door handle, even though he knew it was locked. He turned back to the two GED cops and signaled them to go around the house to the back, to see if there was an open door. Chu jumped up on the stoop.

  Then Bosch saw Gant appear at the mouth of the hallway. He was smiling and holding up a large Ziploc bag containing a black pistol.

  “Got it, Harry. We’re good.”

  Bosch told Chu to retrieve the two GED guys and he let out his first full breath in ten minutes. It was the best way to have worked it. There was no way O’Toole would have approved his going for a search warrant. There wasn’t enough probable cause for a judge to okay a search three years after the subject’s death. So the dummy warrant scam was the best way. And Gant’s script had worked perfectly. Briscoe had given them the gun voluntarily, without their having to illegally search the house.

  As Gant approached the door, Bosch could see that the Ziploc bag was wet.

  “Toilet tank?”

  An obvious place. One of the top five hiding places used by criminals. They all watched The Godfather at some point in their maturation process.

  “Nope. The drain pan under the washing machine.”

  Bosch nodded. That wasn’t even top twenty-five. Briscoe reached around Gant and unlocked the security gate. Bosch pulled it open to let him out.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Ms. Briscoe,” he said.

  “Just get the fuck off my property now and don’t come back,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Gladly.”

  Bosch threw her a mock salute and followed Gant off the stoop. Gant handed him the bag and Harry checked the weapon as they walked. The plastic bag was smeared with black mold and scratched from years of use but he could tell the gun was a Beretta model 92.

  At the trunk of his car Harry put on a pair of latex gloves and removed the gun from the plastic bag so he could carefully examine it. He first noted that the left side had a deep scrape mark along the barrel and frame that had been painted over or filled in with a marker. It appeared to be the weapon that Charles 2 Small Washburn had described finding in his backyard after the Jespersen murder.

  Bosch next checked the serial number on the left side of the frame. But it appeared that the machine-stamped number was gone. By holding the weapon up closer and angling it in the light, he could see where the metal had been scarred by several scrape marks. He doubted these could have been caused by the lawn mower blade. Rather, it looked like a concentrated and deliberate effort to obliterate the tracking number. The closer he looked at the scarring on the metal, the more he was convinced. Either Trumont Story or a previous holder of the gun had purposely removed the serial number.

  “That it?” Gant asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “You see the serial number?”

  “No, it’s gone.”

  Bosch ejected the fully loaded magazine and the bullet from the gun’s chamber. He then transferred the weapon to a new plastic evidence bag. Ballistics testing would have to confirm the gun’s connection to the Jespersen killing and those that followed, but Bosch felt sure that he was holding the first solid piece of evidence produced in the case in twenty years. It didn’t necessarily move him any closer to Anneke Jespersen’s killer but it was something. It was a starting point.

  “I told you all to get!” Briscoe called from behind her security gate. “Leave me alone or I’ll sue your asses for harassment! Why don’t you make yourselves useful and find out who killed Tru Story.”

  Bosch put the gun into an open cardboard box he kept in the trunk and then slammed the lid, looking at the woman over the roof of his car. He held his tongue as he came around to the driver-side door.

  They were lucky. Charles Washburn had not only been unable to make bail but he had yet to be transferred from the lockup at 77th Street Station to the city jail downtown. He was pulled out and returned to the interview room in the Detective Bureau and was waiting there when Bosch, Chu, and Gant walked in.

  “What, we got three stooges now?” he said. “It take all three a you to roust me this time?”

  “Nah, we ain’t here to roust you, Charlie,” Gant said. “We’re here to make things right by you.”

  “Yeah, and how’s that?”

  Bosch pulled out a chair and sat across from Washburn. He placed a closed cardboard box on the table. Gant and Chu remained standing in the tiny room.

  “We got a deal for you,” Gant said. “You take us to the house where you grew up and show us where you put a bullet in the fence post, and we’ll see what we can do about dropping some of these charges you got on you. You know, cooperating witness. Quid pro quo.”

  “What, now? It’s dark out, man.”

  “We’ve got flashlights, Two Small,” Bosch said.

  “I ain
’t no cooperating witness, man, and you can keep your quid pro quota shit. I only tol’ you about Story because he’s dead. You can put me back in lockup now.”

  He started to get up but Gant clapped him on the shoulder in a way that was friendly but also kept him in the chair.

  “Nah, you won’t be cooperating against anybody. Nuttin’ like that. You’ll just be leading us to that bullet. That’s all we want.”

  “And that’s all?”

  His eyes moved to the box on the table. Gant looked at Bosch who took over.

  “And we want you to look at a couple of guns we picked up and see if you can identify the one you found twenty years ago. The gun you gave to Trumont Story.”

  Bosch leaned forward and opened the box. They had put two other unloaded 9mm pistols in evidence bags into the box along with the gun turned over by Gail Briscoe. Bosch took them out and put them on the table and then put the box on the floor. Gant then uncuffed Washburn so he could pick each one up and study it without removing it from the plastic bag.

  Two Small examined the Beretta from Trumont Story’s house last. He studied both sides and then nodded.

  “This one,” he said.

  “You sure about that?” Bosch asked.

  Washburn ran a finger along the left side of the Beretta.

  “Yeah, I guess, except they fixed the scratch mark up. But I can still feel it. That’s the lawnmower blade.”

  “I don’t want you guessing. Is that the weapon you found or not?”

  “Yeah, man, it’s the piece.”

  Bosch took it back and stretched the plastic tightly across the frame where the serial number would have been stamped.

  “Look at that. Is that how it was when you found it?”

  “Look at what?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Charles. The serial number’s gone. Was it that way when you found it?”

  “You mean those scratch marks? Yeah, I guess so. The lawnmower did that.”

  “No lawnmower did that. That was done with a file. And you’re saying you’re sure that’s the way it was when you found it?”

  “Man, I can’t be sure about nothin’ twenty years ago. What do you want from me? I don’t remember.”

  Bosch was getting annoyed with his dancing.

  “Did you do that, Charles? To make it more valuable to a guy like Tru Story?”

  “No, man, I didn’t do it.”

  “Then, tell me, how many guns have you found in your life, Charles?”

  “Just this one.”

  “Okay, and as soon as you found it, you knew it had a value, right? You knew you could give it to the street boss and you could get something back for it. They might welcome you into the club, right? So don’t be dancing around this, telling me you don’t remember. If the serial number was gone when you found it, then you would have told Trumont Story that it was gone, because you knew it would be a plus to him. So, which is it, Charles?”

  “Yeah, man, it was gone. Okay? It was gone. There was no serial number when I found it, and that’s what I told Tru, so get outta my face.”

  Bosch realized he had leaned across the table and had invaded what Washburn considered his personal space. He leaned back.

  “Okay, Charles, thank you.”

  It was a significant admission because it confirmed something about how Anneke Jespersen’s killer carried out the crime. Bosch had been grinding on the question of why the killer had thrown the gun over the fence. Had something happened in the alley that necessitated his getting rid of the gun? Had the gunshot drawn others? The fact that he was using a gun that he thought was untraceable made things fit a little better. With the serial number obliterated, the killer would have thought that the only way to be connected to the murder would be to be caught with the murder weapon in his possession. The best way to avoid that was to dump the gun quickly. This explained why the gun was thrown over the fence.

  Making sense of the sequence of events in the crime was always important to Bosch.

  “Now you going to drop my charges and shit?” Washburn asked.

  Bosch came out of his thoughts and looked at him.

  “No, not yet. We still want to find that bullet.”

  “Why you need that? You got the gun now.”

  “Because it will help tell the story. Juries like the little details. Let’s go.”

  Bosch stood up and started packing the three guns back in the cardboard box. Holding the cuffs out, Gant signaled Washburn to stand up. Washburn stayed put in his chair and continued protesting.

  “I told you where it is, man. You don’t need me.”

  Bosch suddenly realized something and waved Gant back.

  “Tell you what, Charles. You promise to cooperate out there and we don’t have to go with the cuffs. And we’ll be sure to keep you and your ex far apart. That work for you?”

  Washburn looked at Bosch and nodded. Harry saw the change. The little man had been worried about his son seeing him cuffed up.

  “But if you jackrabbit on us,” Gant said, “I will hunt your ass down and you ain’t going to like it when I find you. Now, let’s go.”

  This time he helped Washburn up out of his seat.

  A half hour later Bosch and Chu stood with Washburn in the backyard of his boyhood home. Gant was in the front of the house, maintaining a vigil with Washburn’s ex, making sure her anger didn’t translate into aggressive action against the father of her child.

  It didn’t take Washburn long to point out the fence post he had put a bullet in twenty years before. The penetration mark was still visible, especially in the angled light of their flashlights. The hole had broken the weather seal on the wood and been the point of water damage. Chu first took a photograph with his phone, while Bosch held a business card next to the penetration point to give it scale. Then Bosch opened the blade of his folding knife and dug into the soft, rotting wood, soon prying out the lead slug. He rolled it between his fingers to clean it off and then held it up. The bullet that had been ahead of it in the gun had killed Anneke Jespersen.

  He dropped the slug into a small evidence bag opened by Chu.

  “So, now I walk?” Washburn said, his eyes warily darting toward the back door of the house.

  “Not quite yet,” Bosch said. “We’ve got to go back to Seventy-seventh and do some paperwork.”

  “You told me if I helped, you’d drop the charges. Cooperating witness and all that.”

  “You’ve cooperated, Charles, and we appreciate it. But we never said we would drop all the charges. We said, you help us, we help you. So we go back now and I make some calls and we will improve your situation. I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with the drug charge. But the child support, you still have to deal with that. That’s a warrant issued by a judge. You’ll have to see him to take care of that.”

  “It was a her, and how’m I gonna deal with that if they got me in jail?”

  Bosch turned square to Washburn and separated his feet. If 2 Small was going to rabbit, he would do it now. Chu caught the movement and changed his posture as well.

  “Well,” Bosch said, “maybe that’s a question you have to ask your lawyer.”

  “My lawyer ain’t worth shit. I ain’t even seen him yet.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you start by getting a new one. Let’s go.”

  As they were crossing the yard to the broken gate, the face of a boy appeared under the curtain of one of the house’s back windows. Washburn raised his hand and gave him a thumbs-up.

  By the time they cleared 77th Street Station, leaving Washburn behind in the holding tank, Bosch knew it would be too late to go directly to the Regional Crime Lab at Cal State with the gun and bullet they had collected. So he and Chu headed back to the PAB and locked them in the Open-Unsolved Unit’s evidence safe.

  Before heading home, he checked his desk for messages and saw a Post-it on the back of his chair. He knew it was from Lieutenant O’Toole before even reading it. It was one of O’Toole’s favorite means of comm
unication. The message simply said NEED TO TALK.

  “Looks like you get a face-to-face with O’Fool in the morning, Harry,” Chu said.

  “Yeah, I can’t wait.”

  He wadded up the message and threw it into the trash can. He wouldn’t be hurrying in to see O’Toole in the morning. He had other things to do.

  12

  They worked like a team. Madeline made the online order and Bosch swung by Birds on Franklin to pick the food up. It was still hot when he got home. They opened the to-go boxes and slid them across the table when they had guessed wrong. They both had gotten the signature rotisserie chicken but Bosch had gone for the baked-beans-and-coleslaw combo with a BBQ dipping sauce, and his daughter had gone with a double order of mac and cheese for her sides and the Malaysian hot-and-sweet dipping sauce. The lavash bread came wrapped in aluminum foil, and a third, smaller container held the order of fried pickles that they’d agreed to share.

  The food was delicious. Not as good as eating at Birds but pretty damn close. Though they sat facing each other while eating, they didn’t talk much. Bosch was consumed by thoughts regarding the case and how he would move forward with the weapon he had recovered earlier. His daughter, meantime, was reading a book as she ate. Bosch did not complain, because he considered reading while eating a far better thing than texting and Facebooking, which she usually did.

  Bosch was an impatient detective. To him, case momentum was everything. How to get it, how to keep it, how to guard against being distracted from it. He knew he could turn the gun in to the Firearms Unit for analysis and possible restoration of the serial number. But most likely he would hear nothing back for weeks, if not months. He had to find a way to avoid that, to move around the bureaucratic and caseload roadblocks. After a while he thought he had a working plan.

  Before long, Bosch had finished his food. He looked across the table and saw that he might get a little bit of mac and cheese if he was lucky.

  “You want anymore frickles?” he asked.

  “No, you can have the rest,” she said.

  He ate the remaining pickles with one bite. He eyed the book she was reading. It was assigned in English lit. She was near the end. Bosch guessed she had no more than a couple chapters left.