“Okay, okay, you need to listen to me now. We got intel yesterday that the SanFers had put a hit out on Harry because they know he was building a case against one of their OGs. Today we were working on it. But last night I warned Harry. I told him. So, is there any chance that he just went into hiding?”
A sharp pressure started building in Ballard’s chest. It was dread.
“I—No, that’s not what it looks like here. His keys are on the table. And his car’s here.”
“Maybe he thought the car could be tracked. Look, I’m not trying to downplay this. If you’re saying this looks involuntary, then we’ll call out the troops on this end. Have you talked to his daughter?”
Ballard suddenly realized that Bosch had revealed something to her during the course of the week that might be helpful.
“No,” she said. “But I will now. I’ll call you back.”
She disconnected the call.
34
Ballard moved back into the house to conduct a different kind of search. She needed a phone number for Bosch’s daughter. In the master bedroom, she had seen a small desk like the ones found in a hotel room. She went there and started looking through drawers until she found one containing checkbooks and rubber-banded stacks of envelopes.
One stack was all telephone bills. She quickly opened the envelope on top and saw that Bosch had a family plan where he paid for two cell phones on one account. One she recognized as his number, and the other she assumed was his daughter’s. She next opened the checkbook and looked through the registry until she came upon a record of a check for four hundred dollars to Madeline Bosch.
She had what she needed and made the call. It rang through to a message, which didn’t surprise her, since Bosch’s daughter would have no reason to recognize her number.
“Madeline, this is Detective Ballard with the LAPD. It’s very important that you call me back as soon as you hear this. Please call me back.”
She gave her number even though the girl’s phone would have captured it. She then disconnected, put everything back in the drawer, and got up from the desk. Bosch had mentioned in passing that his daughter went to Chapman down in Orange County and was just an hour or so away. She was considering a call to the school’s security office to see if Madeline Bosch could be located, but then her phone buzzed and the screen showed the number she had just called.
“Madeline?”
“Yes, what’s going on? Where’s my father?”
“We’re trying to find him and we need your help.”
“Oh my god, what happened?”
“Don’t panic, Madeline. Is that what you go by? Madeline?”
“It’s Maddie. Tell me what happened.”
“I’m not sure. He missed two appointments with me and I can’t reach him. I’m at his house now and his car is in the carport and there’s food on the table but he’s not here. When did you hear from him last?”
“He, uh, texted me last night. He asked about getting together this weekend.”
“Are he and your mother divorced? Would he be in touch with—”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Okay, sorry, I didn’t know. This is where I need your help. Your dad told me that you two had a deal. He could track your phone if you could track his. I think his phone is off at the moment but I want you to pull up your tracker and tell me where the last tracking point on it is. Can you do that?”
“Yes. I just need to—I’ll put you on speaker while I…”
“Go ahead.”
Ballard waited and eventually Maddie spoke.
“Okay, it only goes up to eleven forty-two last night. Then it stops.”
“Okay, that’s good. What’s the location of the phone?”
There was silence as Maddie checked the location. Ballard hoped it wasn’t the house. That would not advance things at all.
“Uh, it’s up in the Valley. A place called the Saddletree Open Space.”
Ballard’s heart sank. It sounded like a place to dump a body.
“Can you be more specific?” she asked, trying not to reveal her thoughts in the tone of her voice. “Can you widen the screen or something?”
“Hold on,” Maddie said.
Ballard waited.
“Um, it’s, like, near Sylmar,” Maddie said. “The nearest road to the spot is Coyote Street.”
“Can you hang up, take a screenshot, and text it to me?”
“Yes, but why was he up there? What is—”
“Maddie, listen to me. We need to hang up so you can send me the screenshot. I need to get that to the right people so we can see if your father is there. I know you’re scared and this is an awful kind of call to get. But I need to go now. I will call you back as soon as I know something. Okay?”
Ballard thought she could hear the girl crying.
“Maddie?”
“Yes, okay. I’m hanging up.”
“One other thing. I know that if you are anything like your dad, you’re going to send me the screenshot and then get in a car and head up here. Don’t do that. You have to stay away from your house, okay? It may not be safe.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. I need you to stay away until you hear from me or your father, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good. Send me the screenshot.”
Ballard disconnected. She knew that Heather Rourke was probably sleeping, but that didn’t matter. She called her friend and, surprisingly, the call was answered right away.
“What are you doing awake, Renée?”
“Still working, and I have a situation. I need a flyover up in the Valley. Who do you think would do it for me?”
“That’s easy. Me.”
“What?”
“I’m working an OT shift and have the Valley today. We’re about to go up. Where in the Valley?”
“Sylmar area. How long until—”
“Thirty minutes. What exactly are you looking for?”
“We’re looking for a missing police officer. I’m going to text you a screenshot of the location we have on a map. The area’s called the Saddletree Open Space. I need to know what’s there. Any houses, structures, whatever. And if there’s nothing there…look for a body.”
“You got it. Get that screenshot to me.”
“As soon as I have it, I’ll send. Keep this off the radio if you can. Use my cell to make contact.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected just as the screenshot from Maddie Bosch came through. She forwarded it to Heather Rourke and started moving through the house, realizing that it might become a crime scene. She left the back slider open and went out the front door and locked it behind her.
She didn’t get a clear signal on her phone until she took Woodrow Wilson back down into the pass and started north on the 101 freeway. Then she called Lourdes back at San Fernando PD.
“Do you know anything about the Saddletree Open Space?”
“Uh, I don’t even know what that is.”
“It’s just north of Sylmar off a road called Coyote Street. We traced Bosch’s phone to a spot there last night about midnight. Then it went dead. I have an airship about to fly over and tell us what’s there. I’m on my way.”
“I’m closer. I can get up there now.”
“Wait for the flyover. We don’t know what’s up there. It could be a body but it could be a trap.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“If you people knew there was a hit out on him, why wasn’t he protected?”
“He turned it down. I don’t think he took it seriously. We still don’t know if it has anything to do with this. He might be up there camping and there’s no cell service.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I want to keep my phone free. I’ll call when I hear something on the flyover.”
“I’m here and, look, Harry saved my life once and…”
She didn’t finish.
“I get it,” Ballard said.
She disconnected.
The late-morning northbound traffic was light and Ballard made good time. She took the 101 to the 170 and then the 5 before dropping onto surface streets at Roxford. She checked her phone screen repeatedly, but there was nothing from Rourke on the flyover. Ballard even leaned over to look up through the windshield to see if she could spot the helicopter moving against the backdrop of the mountains that rimmed the Valley. There was nothing.
As she was crossing San Fernando Road, she got a call from Rourke instead of a text. There was no sound of the chopper’s engine in the background and she grew livid.
“You’re still at Piper Tech?”
“No, we have a pad we can use at the Davis.”
Ballard knew the department had a training facility near Sylmar named after former chief Edward Davis.
“You did the flyover? Was there anything up there?”
Ballard could hear her own voice drawn tight by the tension of the moment.
“No body,” Rourke said. “But about a hundred yards further north into the scrub from the spot on that screenshot you sent me, it looks like there’s some kind of an abandoned kennel or animal-training facility. There are a couple of sheds and training rings. But no vehicles, no sign of life.”
Ballard exhaled. At least Bosch’s body wasn’t lying out there in the sun.
“Can it be accessed?” she asked.
“Might be tough on the suspension,” Rourke said. “Looks like there was a washout on the dirt road up there.”
“Did you take any photos?”
“Yes. I’m about to send but I thought I should talk to you first.”
“No problem.”
“Do you want us to stay close?”
“I think I’m about fifteen out on a ground search. If you can fly backup, I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Okay, we’re here till we get a call.”
“Roger that.”
Ballard disconnected and called Lourdes back. She told the San Fernando detective what the results of the flyover were and invited her to meet at the terminus of Coyote Street and then conduct a ground search of the last known location of Harry Bosch’s phone.
“I’m on my way,” Lourdes said.
Bosch
35
The sound of the helicopter overhead gave Bosch hope. But it made the man watching him panic. Bosch had tried to break through to him all night, asking him his name, asking him to loosen the bindings and if he could allow him out of the cage to stretch his cramped legs. Asking if he really wanted the killing of a cop hanging over him.
But the man had said nothing. He just stared at Bosch and on occasion pointed his gun at him through the cage. Bosch knew that was a hollow threat. He was being kept alive for something else. Or someone else. Bosch guessed it would be Tranquillo Cortez.
The man had the hardened stare of a convict and the prison tattoos to go with it. Faded blue ink. Bosch saw none of the symbols associated with the SanFers—no VSF, no 13—such as he had seen on every SanFer he had encountered during his time with the SFPD. That included Tranquillo Cortez.
Bosch had all night to put things together and had come out of it sure that this man was Mexican Mafia, eMe, and that Cortez might have gone outside the SanFers to conduct what could be a rogue operation. Abducting a cop was a big move that would put massive pressure on the VSF. Killing a cop was even bigger pressure. Cortez wanted deniability.
It had taken three men to abduct him from his home, four counting the driver of the Jeep that took him up the rugged hillside to this grim destination, and now, for the past four hours, just one silent man to guard him. Every minute that passed felt like an hour, every hour like a day. Bound and crammed into a dog cage, Bosch contemplated his impending death. In the Jeep he had picked up enough of the conversation in Spanish to understand that he was ultimately going to be fed to the dogs. But it was not clear whether that was a figure of speech. And if not, it was not clear whether that would happen while he was still alive or not.
Through it all he was haunted by only one thing. His daughter. Not having had final words with her. Not being able to watch her prosper as an adult. It tore him up to think that he would never see or speak to her again. Guilt overtook him as he acknowledged that he had squandered the past several months as Maddie’s father trying to save a woman who didn’t want to be saved. In the darkest hours before dawn, hot tears of regret had rolled down his cheeks.
But then came the sound of the helicopter directly overhead. In a moment, it changed things for both Bosch and the man guarding him. Bosch had been at enough crime scenes and officer-needs-help calls over the years to recognize the high-pitched engine whine of the powerful Bell 206 JetRanger. He knew that the craft circling above the shed was an LAPD chopper and that they might already be looking for him. It gave him hope that he might see his daughter again and have the chance to make things right.
For the silent guard, the same sound bred terror and the fight-or-flight instincts that come with it. He went to the door, slivered it open, and looked up into the sky. Sighting the craft, he confirmed what Bosch already knew. He turned from the door and came to the cage, raising the barrel of his gun.
Bosch put his hands up as well as he could in the cramped space and spoke in rudimentary Spanish.
“You kill a cop, they’ll never stop hunting you.”
The man hesitated. Bosch kept speaking. He had no formal training in the language, just what he had picked up over a lifetime of working the streets, and from partners like Lucia Soto and Bella Lourdes.
“What will Tranquillo say? He wants me alive. You’re going to take that from him?”
The man stood frozen, the gun still pointed at Bosch.
In his early life Bosch had spent fifteen months in Vietnam. Not a day went by in that time that he didn’t hear helicopters. It was the background music of the war. Hiding in the elephant grass, waiting for a dustoff, he had learned early how to read their sound for distance and location. He could now tell that the airship flying above them was spiraling in increasingly larger circles.
His guard moved back to the door and looked out. He sensed what Bosch had, that the helicopter was making a wider turn. Then the sound changed again. It became muffled and Bosch knew the craft had flown behind the crest of the mountain. The shed was out of its sight.
The man with the gun turned and looked at him for a long moment, deciding what to do. Bosch knew he was deciding his life. He kept their eyes locked.
The man suddenly turned and pushed the door open further. He looked out and up toward the sky. The sound of the chopper was still distant.
“Sali!” Bosch yelled. “Ahora!”
He hoped it was “Go now!” or something close.
The man shoved the door all the way open, filling the shed with blinding light. He slid the gun into the waistband of his pants and moved back into the corner where a green motorbike was leaning against the rusting steel wall. He jumped on it, kick-started it, and then shot through the open door.
Bosch’s eyes adjusted and he exhaled. He listened. The airship was coming around on another turn, clearing the mountain and getting louder.
With the interior of the shed now brightly illuminated, Bosch shifted his position in the cage, studying every corner and joint for weakness. He knew it was impossible to know if the airship was looking for him, simply conducting a training exercise, or just circling over a coyote. It was true that his abductors had made a mistake last night in not checking him for a phone until they were transferring him from a van to the Jeep, but Bosch knew he could not rely on anyone to save him but himself.
He had to work quickly and find a way out of the cage. It was only a matter of time before the man on the motorbike came back.
Ballard
36
Ballard waited for Bella Lourdes by the Coyote Street gate to the fire road leading up into the hills and the abandoned animal training compound. She was looking at the aerial photos Heather Rourke had texted
her and deciding whether it would be better to approach the compound on foot or by attempting to drive a vehicle up the rugged fire road.
The compound was not far up and was in an open area that would prevent an unannounced approach by car. She decided she would go on foot and call in the airship if a show of LAPD force was necessary.
When Lourdes arrived, she had a partner with her. She identified him as Detective Danny Sisto and, recognizing Ballard’s concern, vouched for him as someone Bosch himself would implicitly trust. Ballard accepted her assurance and brought them both up to date on the situation. She showed them the photos from the airship’s flyover.
“Okay, I think I know the connection here,” Lourdes said.
“What?” Ballard asked.
Lourdes looked at Sisto for confirmation when she spoke.
“A couple years ago, there was a big Animal Control bust up here,” she said. “This place was like a training center for animals used in film and TV but it had been abandoned for years. The SanFers discovered it and they were running cockfights and dog fights up here. Animal Control got wind of it and shut it down.”
“I remember that,” Sisto said. “It was a big story. I think you guys were part of it.”
This last part he said to Ballard, meaning that the LAPD had joined Animal Control in shutting down the illegal activities at the compound. Ballard remembered nothing about the events or the media attention it got. But the confirmation that this was a place the SanFers knew about and had used previously was important. She knew they were in the right place.
Sisto pointed at her phone, which still had an aerial shot of the compound on the screen.
“We’re going to search the structures, right?” he asked. “Do we have a warrant? This is still private property, abandoned or not.”
“We don’t have time,” Ballard said.
“Exigent circumstances all the way,” Lourdes said.
Looking at the photos, they identified two trails in addition to the fire road that led through the brush and up to the compound. Before they headed up separately, Ballard called Rourke, explained the plan, and told her to stand by. The airship was still on the ground at the nearby LAPD training facility and Rourke assured her that it was ready to respond.
Dark Sacred Night Page 23