The Drop hb-17

by Michael Connelly

  He went back into the hall to check the bathroom.

  “Harry, everything okay up there?” Chu called from downstairs.

  “Everything’s cool. Be right down.”

  He re-holstered his weapon and leaned his head into the bathroom. Dingy towels hung on a rack and one more ashtray was on top of the toilet tank. A plastic air freshener sat next to it. Bosch almost laughed at the sight of it.

  The bathtub enclosure had a plastic curtain with mold on it and the tub completed the motif with a ring of grime that looked years in the making. Disgusted, Bosch turned to go back down the stairs. But then he thought better of it and returned to the bathroom. He opened the medicine cabinet and found the three glass shelves fully racked with prescription bottles and inhalers. He randomly took one off its shelf and read the label. It was a four-year-old prescription for Hardy for something called generic theophylline. He replaced it and took down one of the inhalers. It was another generic prescription, this time for something called albuterol. It was three years old.

  Bosch studied another inhaler. Then another. And then he checked every inhaler and bottle in the cabinet. There were many different generic drugs and some of the bottles were full while most of them were almost empty. But there wasn’t a prescription in the cabinet that was more recent than three years old.

  Bosch closed the cabinet, coming to his own face in the mirror. He looked at his dark eyes for a long moment.

  And suddenly he knew.

  He left the bathroom and walked quickly back to Hardy’s bedroom. He closed the door so he would not be heard from the living room. Pulling his phone as he picked up one of the oxygen canisters, he called the number for ReadyAire and asked to speak to the delivery and pickup coordinator. He was connected to someone named Manuel.

  “Manuel, my name is Detective Bosch. I work for the Los Angeles Police Department and I am conducting an investigation. I need to know very quickly when you last delivered prescription oxygen to one of your customers. Can you help me?”

  Manuel at first thought the call was a joke, a prank perpetrated by a friend.

  “Listen to me,” Bosch said sternly. “This is no joke. This is an urgent investigation and I need this information right now. I need you to help me or put me on with someone who can.”

  There was a silence and Bosch heard Chu call his name out again. Bosch put down the canister and covered his phone with his hand. He opened the bedroom door.

  “I’ll be right down,” he called out.

  He then closed the door and went back to the phone.

  “Manuel, are you there?”

  “Yes. I can put the name into the computer and see what we have.”

  “Okay, do it. The name is Chilton Aaron Hardy.”

  Bosch waited and heard typing.

  “Uh, he’s here,” Manuel said. “But he doesn’t get his oh-two from us anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It shows our last delivery to him was July of oh-eight. He either died or started getting it from somewhere else. Probably somewhere cheaper. We lose a lot of business that way.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m looking at it right here.”

  “Thank you, Manuel.”

  Bosch disconnected the call. He put his phone away and pulled his gun back out.

  35

  As Bosch descended the stairs his adrenaline level rose. He saw that Hardy had not moved from his chair but he was now smoking a cigarette. Chu was sitting on the arm of the couch, keeping watch.

  “I made him turn off the tank,” he said. “So he wouldn’t blow us all up.”

  “There’s nothing in the tank,” Bosch said.

  “What?”

  Bosch didn’t answer. He moved across the room until he was standing directly in front of Hardy.

  “Stand up.”

  Hardy looked up, confusion on his face.

  “I said stand up.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Bosch reached down with both hands, grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him up out of the chair. He spun him around and pushed him face-first against the wall.

  “Harry, what are you doing?” Chu asked. “He’s an old—”

  “It’s him,” Bosch said.

  “What?”

  “It’s the son, not the father.”

  Bosch pulled his handcuffs off his belt and bound Hardy’s arms behind his back.

  “Chilton Hardy, you’re under arrest for the murder of Lily Price.”

  Hardy said nothing as Bosch recited his Constitutional rights. He turned his cheek to the wall and even had a small smile on his face.

  “Harry, is the father upstairs?” Chu asked from behind him.

  “No.”

  “Then, where is he?”

  “I think he’s dead. Junior’s been living here as him, collecting his pension and social security and all that stuff. Open the file. Where’s the DL photo?”

  Chu stepped forward with the blowup shot of Chilton Aaron Hardy Jr. Bosch turned Hardy around and then held him against the wall with one hand on his chest. He held the photo up next to his face. He then flicked the thick eyeglasses off him and they fell to the floor.

  “It’s him. He shaved his head for the DL photo. Changed his appearance. We never pulled up his father’s photo. I guess we should have.”

  Bosch handed the photo back to Chu. Hardy’s smile grew broader.

  “You think this is funny?” Bosch asked.

  Hardy nodded.

  “I think it’s pretty fucking funny that you don’t have any evidence and you don’t have a case.”

  His voice was different now. A deeper timbre. Not the fragile old man’s voice from before.

  “And I think it’s pretty fucking funny that you searched this place illegally. No judge is going to believe I gave you permission. Too bad you didn’t find anything. I’d love watching the judge throw it all out.”

  Bosch grabbed a handful of Hardy’s shirt and pulled him off the wall, then slammed him back against it. He felt his rage building.

  “Hey, partner?” he said. “Go out to the car and get your computer. I want to write up a search warrant right now.”

  “Harry, I already checked on my phone, there’s no Wi-Fi here. How’re we going to send it in?”

  “Partner, just go get the computer. We’ll worry about Wi-Fi after you write it up. And close the door when you leave.”

  “Okay, partner. I’ll go get the laptop.”

  Message received.

  Bosch never took his eyes off Hardy’s. He saw them register the situation, that he was about to be left alone with Bosch, and the beginning of fear entered their shiny coldness. As soon as he heard the front door close, Bosch pulled his Glock and pushed the muzzle into the flesh under Hardy’s chin.

  “Guess what, asshole, we’re going to end this right here. Because you’re right, we don’t have enough. And I’m not letting you run free another fucking day.”

  He violently yanked Hardy off the wall and spun him to the floor. Hardy crashed into the side table, knocking the ashtray and water glass onto the rug, and landed on his back. Bosch dropped down on him, straddling his torso.

  “The way this will work is, we didn’t know it was you, you see? We thought it was your father all along and when my partner went out to the car you jumped me. There was a struggle for the gun and—guess what?—you didn’t win.”

  Bosch held the gun up sideways, displaying it in front of Hardy’s face.

  “There will be two shots. The one I’m about to put through your black fucking heart, and then after I take off the cuffs, I’ll wrap your dead hands around my Glock and cap one into the wall. That way we both get gunshot residue and everybody’s cool with it.”

  Bosch leaned down and positioned the gun with the barrel at an upward angle to Hardy’s chest.

  “Yeah, I think like this,” he said.

  “Wait!” Hardy yelled. “You can’t do this!”

  In his ey
es Bosch saw true terror.

  “This is for Lily Price and Clayton Pell and everybody else you killed and hurt and destroyed.”

  “Please.”

  “Please? Is that what Lily said to you? Did she say please?”

  Bosch changed the angle of the gun slightly and leaned farther down, his chest now only six inches from Hardy’s.

  “Okay, I admit it. Venice Beach, nineteen eighty-nine. I’ll tell you everything. Just take me in and set it up. I’ll tell you about my father, too. I drowned him in the bathtub.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “You’ll tell me what I want to hear just to get out of here alive. But it’s no good, Hardy. It’s too late. We’re past that. Even if you truly confessed, it wouldn’t hold up. Coerced confession. You know that.”

  Bosch pulled back the slide on the Glock to chamber a round.

  “I don’t want a bullshit confession. I want evidence. I want your stash.”

  “What stash?”

  “You keep stuff. All you guys keep stuff. Pictures, souvenirs. You want to save yourself, Hardy, tell me where the stash is.”

  He waited. Hardy said nothing. Bosch put the muzzle down against his chest and angled the gun again.

  “All right, all right,” Hardy said desperately. “Next door. Everything’s next door. My father owned both places. I have it set up with a phony name on the deed. You go look. You’ll find everything you need.”

  Bosch stared down at him for a long moment.

  “If you’re lying, you’re dying.”

  He withdrew the gun and holstered it. He started to get up.

  “How do I get in?”

  “The keys are on the counter in the kitchen.”

  The odd smile returned to Hardy’s face. A moment ago he was desperate to save his own life, now he was smiling. Bosch realized it was a look of pride.

  “Go check it out,” Hardy urged. “You’re going to be famous, Bosch. You caught the goddamn record holder.”

  “Yeah? How many?”

  “Thirty-seven. I planted thirty-seven crosses.”

  Bosch had guessed that there were going to be numbers, but not that high. He wondered if Hardy was inflating his kills as part of one last manipulation. Say anything, give anything, just to get out the door alive. All he had to do was survive this moment and he could slip into the next transformation, from unknown and uncharted killer to figure of public fascination and fear. A name that would inspire dread. Bosch knew it was part of the fulfillment process with their kind. Hardy had probably lived in anticipation of the time he would become known. Men like him fantasized about it.

  In one smooth and swift move, Bosch pulled the Glock from his holster again and brought its aim down on Hardy.

  “No!” Hardy yelled. “We have a deal!”

  “We don’t have shit.”

  Bosch pulled the trigger. The metal snap of the firing mechanism sounded and Hardy’s body jerked as if shot, but there was no bullet in the chamber. The gun was empty. Bosch had unloaded it up in the bedroom.

  Bosch nodded. Hardy had missed the tell. No cop would’ve had to chamber a round, because no cop would’ve left the chamber empty. Not in L.A., where the two seconds it takes to chamber a round could cost you your life. That had been just part of the play. In case Bosch had had to string it out.

  He reached down and rolled Hardy over. He put the gun down on his back and from his suit pocket took out two snap ties. He cinched one around Hardy’s ankles, binding them tightly together, and then used the other on his wrists so he could remove his handcuffs. Bosch had a feeling he would not be the one escorting Hardy to jail and he didn’t want to lose his cuffs.

  Bosch stood up and hooked his cuffs back on his belt. He then reached back into his coat pocket and took out a handful of bullets. He ejected the empty magazine from his gun and started reloading it. When he was finished, he slid the magazine back into place and racked one bullet into the chamber before returning the weapon to its holster.

  “Always keep one in the chamber,” he said to Hardy.

  The door opened and Chu stepped back in, carrying his laptop. He looked at Hardy lying prone on the floor. He had no idea what Bosch’s play had been.

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes. Watch him. Make sure he doesn’t do the kangaroo.”

  Bosch walked down the hallway to the kitchen and found a set of keys on the counter where Hardy had said they would be. When he came back to the living room, he looked around, trying to figure out a way of securing Hardy while he and Chu conferred privately outside about how to proceed. An embarrassing story had gone around the PAB a few months earlier about a robbery suspect dubbed the Kangaroo. He had been bound at the ankles and wrists and left on the floor of a bank while the arresting officers looked for another suspect they believed was hiding in the building. Fifteen minutes later officers in another responding car saw a man hopping down the street, three blocks from the bank.

  Finally, Bosch got an idea.

  “Get the end of the couch,” he said.

  “What are we doing?” Chu asked.

  Bosch pointed him to the end.

  “Tip it.”

  They tipped the couch forward on its front legs and then down over Hardy. It tented him and made it almost impossible for him to try to stand up with his arms and legs bound.

  “What is this?” Hardy protested. “What are you doing?”

  “Just sit tight, Hardy,” Bosch replied. “We won’t leave you too long.”

  Bosch signaled Chu toward the front door. As they were going out, Hardy called out.

  “Be careful, Bosch!”

  Bosch looked back at him.

  “Of what?”

  “Of what you’ll see. You won’t be the same after today.”

  Bosch stood with his hand on the knob for a long moment. Only Hardy’s feet were visible, extending from under the overturned couch.

  “We’ll see,” he said

  He stepped out and closed the door.

  36

  It was like being at the end of a maze and having to work their way back to the starting point. They had the location they wanted to search—the town house next door, where Hardy claimed he kept his stash of keepsakes from his kills. They just had to figure out the chain of events and legal steps taking them to it that could be put in a search warrant and that would be accepted and approved by a superior court judge.

  Bosch did not reveal to Chu what had occurred in Hardy’s living room while Chu was back at the car. Not only was there the trust issue that had exploded on the Irving case, but Bosch had no doubt coerced a confession from Hardy, and he would not share that transgression with anyone. If and, more likely, when Hardy claimed coercion as part of his defense, Bosch would simply deny it and dismiss it as an outrageous defense tactic. There would be no possibility of anyone other than Hardy—the accused—being able to attack Bosch’s story.

  So Bosch told Chu what they needed to do and they worked out how to get there.

  “Chilton Hardy Senior, who is most likely dead, is supposed to be the owner of these two town houses. We need to search them both and we need to do it now. How do we get there?”

  They were standing on the grass in front of the town house complex. Chu looked at the facades of units 6A and 6B as if the answer to the question might be painted on them like graffiti.

  “Well, probable cause on six B is not going to be a problem,” he said. “We found him there living as his father. We’re entitled to search for any indication of what happened to the old man. Exigent circumstances, Harry. We’re in.”

  “And what about six A? That’s the place we really want.”

  “So we . . . we just . . . Okay, I think I got it. We came down to interview Chilton Hardy Senior but halfway through we realize that the guy in front of us is actually Chilton Hardy Junior. There is no sign of Hardy Senior and we’re thinking he might be tied up somewhere, being held captive, who knows what. Maybe he’s alive and maybe he’s dead
. So we run a history search on the property appraiser’s database, and lo and behold, he used to own the place right next door and the transfer of title looks phony. We have an obligation to go in there to see if he is alive or in some kind of peril. Exigent circumstances again.”

  Bosch nodded but frowned at the same time. He didn’t like it. It sounded to him like exactly what it was. A story made up to get them in the door. A judge might sign the search warrant but they’d have to find a friendly one. He wanted something bulletproof. Something that any judge would approve and that would hold up upon subsequent legal challenges.

  Suddenly he realized he had their access right in his hand. In more ways than one. He held up the key ring. There were six keys on it. One carried the Dodge logo and was obviously to a vehicle. There were two full-size Schlage keys that he assumed were the keys to the front doors of the two apartments, and then three smaller keys. Two of these were the small keys used to open private mailboxes like the kind they had seen out at the curb.

  “The keys,” he said. “He’s got two mailbox keys. Come on.”

  They headed to the bank of mailboxes. When they got there Bosch tried the keys in the boxes assigned to complex 6. He was able to open the boxes for units 6A and 6B. He noted that the name on 6A was Drew, which Bosch took to be an attempt at humor on Hardy’s part. Hardy and Drew living side by side in Los Alamitos.

  “Okay, we found two mailbox keys in Hardy’s possession,” he said. “That led us here and we learned that he had access to two boxes. Units six A and B. We noted also that he had two Schlage deadbolt keys and this led us to believe he had access to both six A and B. We checked the ownership records and saw the transfer from the father on six B. It doesn’t look right because it took place after we think the son started playing the father. So we need to check out A to see if the old man is being held there. We knocked, got no answer, and now we want permission to go in.”

  Chu nodded. He liked it.

  “I think it works. You want me to write it up that way?”

  “Yeah. Do it. Go write it up inside so you can keep an eye on Hardy.”

  Bosch hefted the key ring in his hand.