by Otto Penzler
"There are cameras," Ferras reported. "He's going to let me see if she was followed out of the lot."
"Good. Let me know."
Bosch hung up.
"That was my partner at the casino," he told Gunn. "He confirmed she won $6,400 last night. He'll check the cameras to see if she was followed when she left."
Gunn nodded.
"Let's go take a look at the victim," Bosch said.
Bosch studied the murder scene silently for several minutes, trying to take in the nuances of motivation. Tracey Blitzstein had a contact wound on the left side of her head just above the ear. There was an explosive exit wound encompassing much of her upper right cheek. Her body sat behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, held in place by the seat belt and shoulder strap. She was killed before she had made a move to get out of the car.
Her small clutch purse was lying unzipped on her lap. Her head was turned slightly to the right and down, her chin on her chest. There was blood spatter and brain material on the dashboard steering wheel and passenger-side seat and door. But little blood had dripped from the wounds down onto her clothes or purse. Death had come instantly, her heart getting no chance to pump blood from the wounds.
Bosch noted that the Mustang's windows were all intact. The fatal shot had been fired through the driver's open door. Bosch drove a Mustang himself. He knew that when the car's transmission was placed in drive, the doors locked automatically. This meant that the shooter didn't open the door, the victim did. She had likely stopped the car, killed the engine, and then opened the door to get out before taking off her seat belt. It was when she opened the door that the killer approached, most likely from behind the car, and fired the fatal shot into her brain from a position slightly behind her. She probably never saw her killer or knew what was coming.
Bosch noticed a yellow evidence marker on the passenger-side door. There was a padded armrest with a hole in it. The yellow tags were used to mark locations of ballistic evidence. He knew that the slug that had killed Tracey Blitzstein had been stopped by the car door.
Bosch saw another yellow marker on the front hood of the car. It marked the location of a bullet casing that had been found in the crack between the hood and the car's front right fender. It was most likely the shell ejected from the killer's gun. Bullet casings were usually ejected from the gun's chamber in an arc to the right rear of the weapon. This was by design because almost all automatics were manufactured for right-handed shooters and a right-rear ejection arc would take the casing away from the shooter.
But a shell could easily be redirected forward after rebounding off another object. And if a left-hander was firing the weapon, that object could be the shooter himself. Bosch was left-handed and had personal experience with this—one time a red-hot shell hit him in the eye after being ejected during range practice. He knew that, depending on the shooter's stance and how the weapon was held, the possibility in this case was that the ejected shell hit the shooter and then caromed forward—possibly to land on the front hood of the car the killer had just fired into.
Bosch nodded to himself. He had a hunch that he was looking for a left- handed shooter.
"What is it?" Gunn asked.
"Nothing yet. Just a theory."
An assistant coroner named Puneet Pram was working the scene along with a forensics team from the LAPD's Scientific Investigation Division. While some coroners kept up a running commentary of what they were doing and seeing at a crime scene, Pram was a very quiet worker. Bosch had been at murder scenes with him before and knew that he would not be getting a lot from him until the autopsy. Donald Dussein, the head of the forensics team, was another matter. He was a known character in the department. Known by a variety of nicknames ranging from Donald Duck to D-Squared, he was usually overly forthcoming—to the point of bending facts into theory and confusing his role at a crime scene. Bosch had worked with him as well and knew he would have to rein him in and keep him on point.
And it wasn't long into Dussein's initial briefing that Bosch had to do just that.
"Couple things first," Dussein said. "The contact wound to the head. Neat and very clean. Too clean if you ask me."
"All right, then I'm asking you," Bosch said. "What do you mean by 'too clean?"
"Well, Harry, I've seen a lot of these in my time. And this has the look of a hitter's work. I'm talking about a contract killer. You have the illicit world of gambling and money in which this victim traversed and then a hit like this and it all adds—"
"Hold on a second there, Double D. How about you stick to forensics and we'll do the detective work, okay? I need facts from you, not theories. Now, what about the contact wound is too clean for you? What are you trying to say?"
Chastened, Dussein nodded.
"The burn pattern is too small," he said. "You see, normally, you put the muzzle up to the side of somebody's head and pull the trigger, you get a three- to five-inch burn in the hair and on the skin. The hot gases coming out of the barrel spread and burn. You follow?"
"We follow," Bosch said.
"Okay, well, we've got no burn here. We've got a contact wound, but we've got no burn, no gases. You know what that means."
Bosch nodded. He did know. It meant that the weapon used to kill Tracey Blitzstein was likely equipped with a sound suppressor—a silencer that would have rechanneled the sound of the shot. In doing so it would have rechanneled the explosion of hot gases as well. It would have sent them backward through the baffles of the snap-on device toward the shooter, leaving the victim's hair unburned except in the immediate area of the wound.
"It would explain why none of the witnesses heard the shot," he said.
Dussein nodded.
"What are you saying, the shooter used a silencer?" Gunn asked.
"That's what I'm saying," Dussein said. He gestured toward the body. "There is no burn. This is a contact wound with no burn. I'm telling you, the shooter used a suppressor."
Bosch nodded. He decided it might be best to move on to the rest of the review.
"Okay," he said. "Let's talk about ballistics."
Dussein nodded, ready to move on himself.
"We got lucky there," he said. "The slug impacted in the padding of the door, and we recovered it in good shape. We also have the casing recovered from the front of the vehicle. A forty-caliber federal. Between the slug and the shell, we will be able to match it to a weapon. You just need to find the weapon."
Bosch nodded. "I'm wondering how the shell ended up on the front hood," he said.
"That's a good question," Dussein said. "You want to hear my theory?"
"How about I tell you mine?"
Bosch moved to the open door of the Mustang and reached in with his left hand, stopping six inches from the victim's head.
"I'm thinking the shooter was possibly left-handed. In this position, the shell could have bounced off his body and then ricocheted forward over the roof to the front hood."
"My theory exactly."
Dussein beamed. Bosch just nodded.
"What about the purse?" he asked. "Can we have that yet?"
"Give me five more minutes and then it's yours," Dussein replied.
Bosch nodded again and stepped back away from the car. He signaled Gunn outside the grouping so they could confer privately.
"Tell me again what the witnesses said about the husband when they saw him in the street?"
"They said he was in the middle of the street screaming for help, yelling things like 'Call the cops' and 'Call for an ambulance.' The man who lives across the street was the next on scene and checked on the victim. He saw that there was no hope and took the husband back over to his place. He was sitting on the porch with him when police arrived on scene."
Gunn pointed across the street to the old Craftsman with a porch running its entire length.
"The neighbor gave him some clothes, too," she added. "A T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Blitzstein never went back into his own house before we shipped him d
owntown."
"Okay, good. Let's just make sure nobody goes into the house until we get a search warrant."
He looked around the crime scene. Gunn took a step closer and spoke in a lower voice.
"You really like him for this, don't you? The husband. I wish I knew what I was missing."
Bosch shook his head. "I don't know. You're probably not missing anything. Things just don't seem right to me. Do you know if David Blitzstein is left-handed or right-handed?"
"I don't know. Do you want me to call my partner? He's probably still delivering him. He could ask."
"No, that would tip him off. Let that go for now. Until we..."
He didn't finish. Until we what? He didn't know yet.
"What doesn't seem right about the scene?" Gunn said, pressing him. "Teach me something."
"Just a feeling, that's all. The door was locked on that car when she pulled in. I know, I have a Mustang and the doors automatically lock."
"Okay, it was locked, but she opened it."
Bosch shook his head. "That's what I don't see. I know this kind of woman. I was married to one. Someone like her, somebody who moves in a man's world, somebody who plays cards all night and wins big ... somebody who knows the dangers that come with all of that ... I don't see her swinging that door open before she takes off the seat belt. She wouldn't open that door until she was ready to move."
Gunn digested Bosch's ramble and nodded.
"But she would open it for someone she trusted," she said.
Bosch pointed a finger at her like a gun and nodded his head.
"Only one problem with that scenario," she said. "Where's the gun? I've got about a dozen witnesses who saw Blitzstein in the middle of the street in his blue jeans and nothing else."
Bosch was ready for that argument.
"The gun could be anywhere. It could be in the house or the canal behind the house. It doesn't matter because the gun and the gunshot do not set the time of the killing. The witnesses didn't look out their windows because they heard a shot, they looked because Blitzstein was out there screaming in the street."
Bosch saw recognition flare in Gunn's eyes.
"You're saying he had time to get rid of the gun because nobody knows how long it was between when she was capped with the silencer and when he went into the street and started waking up the neighborhood."
Bosch nodded.
"That's the other thing. Him going into the street and yelling for help—like he wanted the neighbors to see him. I don't know, if that was my wife in that car with her brains all over the place ... I don't think I'd end up in the middle of the street with no blood on me. I don't see that at all."
His phone started to buzz and he started digging it out of his pocket.
"See if Dussein's done with the purse," he said. "I've got a guy at Parker Center waiting to go to work. I'll get him on the search warrant for the house."
"You got it."
Bosch opened his phone. It was Ignacio Ferras.
"Harry, I've looked at all the tapes from the casino's entrance area and the parking lot. It looks to me like she had a follower."
Bosch felt a sudden pause. A follower would completely contradict the theory he had just spun with Gunn.
"Are you sure, Ignacio?"
"Well, nothing's for sure, but I have her on tape leaving the casino with a security escort. The guy walked her out to her car. He then stood in the lot until she pulled out. Everything was copacetic. But then, in thirty-second intervals, two more cars pulled out and headed in the same direction she did. Toward the freeway entrance down the block."
"Two cars..."
"Yeah, two."
"Okay, but aren't cars pulling in and out of there at a regular clip? Even in the middle of the night? And probably most of the cars that leave go to the freeway, right?"
"Yeah, they do. At all hours—the casino's open twenty-four hours. But after I saw these two cars follow her out, I went back through the tapes to trace the drivers. I found one of them came out a couple minutes before the victim. He got in his car and took a little time before pulling out. I think he was smoking. That allowed the victim to leave first."
"Okay, and what about the second car?"
"That's the thing, Harry. I couldn't find anybody walking out of the casino that connects with that car. Not at first. So I had to go all the way back an hour to find the guy. He left an hour before the victim, and he sat out there in his car waiting for her."
Bosch started to pace in the street as all of this registered.
"Did you also look at the tapes from inside the casino with this guy?" he asked.
"I did. And the guy wasn't playing, Harry. He was just watching. He was walking around, acting like he was a player, but he never actually played. He was watching the tables and in the last hour he was watching her play. The victim. He zeroed in on her. Then he left and waited for her in the parking lot."
Bosch nodded slowly. He was seeing the case turning completely in a new direction. Kimber Gunn walked up to him then but he held up a finger so he could finish the call.
"Ignacio, did you get plates off the cars that left after Tracey Blitzstein?"
"Yeah, we got the plates on the tape. The first car was registered to a Douglas Pennington of Beverly Hills. The second car's registered to a Charles Turnbull of Hollywood."
Beverly Hills and Hollywood were on the west side, same as Venice. If Pennington and Turnbull were heading home from the casino in Commerce, they would have gone in the same direction as Tracey Blitzstein. That was explainable—at least as far as Pennington went. But Turnbull's activity in the casino and then his waiting in the parking lot for an hour wasn't—yet.
"And you put them through the box?" Bosch asked his partner.
"Yeah, both clean. I mean, Turnbull's got a lot of parking and moving violations, but that's it."
Bosch looked into Gunn's eyes while he tried to think about what to do. Her eyebrows were raised. He could tell she sensed a change in the winds of the investigation.
"Harry, what do you want me to do?" Ferras asked.
"Head to Parker Center. I'm going to put Sauer on a search warrant for the victim's house. Hopefully, he'll have it signed and ready to go by the time you get there. Pick it up and come out here to the scene. We'll figure out things then."
"What about Turnbull?"
"Give me his address. I'm going to take a run by there now."
After he finished the call and hung up, Gunn spoke first.
"I checked the purse. The money's gone. What's happening?"
"You have a company car here?"
"Yeah, I've got a piece-of-shit cruiser from the barn at Pacific."
"Good. You drive. I'll tell you what's happening on the way. Everything I just told you—that we talked about—it all just went down the tubes."
The address Ferras had given Bosch for the home of Charles Turnbull led to a brick apartment building on Franklin. On the way there, Bosch had filled Gunn in on what Ferras had come up with at the casino in Commerce.
They had no background on Turnbull other than what Ferras had given them but when they got to the entrance of the apartment building, another new dimension was added. Next to the button for apartment 4B was the name Turnbull Investigations. Before pushing the button, Bosch called Jim Sauer at Parker Center and asked him to run the name Charles Turnbull through the state corporations and licensing computer. A few minutes later, he hung up.
"He's held a PI license for sixteen years," he told Gunn. "Before that he was a Santa Monica cop."
Bosch pushed the button next to Turnbull Investigations. After getting no response, he pushed it two more times, each time longer than the time before. He had opened his phone again and was asking directory assistance for a number for Turnbull when a sleepy and annoyed voice sounded from the speaker above the entrance buttons.
"Whaaat is it?"
Bosch stepped close to the speaker.
"Mr. Turnbull?"
"Wha
t? It's eight o'clock in the morning!"
"LAPD, Mr. Turnbull. We need to speak to you."
"About what?"
"It's an emergency situation, sir, involving one of your clients. Can we come up?"
"Which client?"
"Can we come up?"
There was no response for five seconds and then there was a buzzing sound and the entrance door was unlocked electronically. They took the elevator up to the fourth floor and on the way Bosch unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. Gunn did the same.
"That a Kimber?" Bosch asked.
"Yeah, the Ultra Carry."
Bosch nodded. It was the same weapon he carried.
"Good gun. Never jams."
"I hope we don't have to find out."
When they stepped out of the elevator there was a man standing in the hallway in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He wore a ragged bathrobe over the ensemble which hid much of his belt line and anything he might have hidden in it. He was in bare feet, and his dark brown hair was sticking straight up on one side. He had been asleep.
"Turnbull?" Bosch asked, while using his right hand to show the man his badge.
"What's this about?" the man asked.
"Not in the hallway. Can we come in, Mr. Turnbull?"
"Whatever."
He pointed them toward the open door to apartment B, but Bosch signaled him to go in first. Bosch wanted to keep Turnbull in front of him and in sight at all times.
"Have a seat if you can find a spot," Turnbull said as they entered. "Coffee?"
"I could use some," Bosch said.
"Thank you," said Gunn.
They both remained standing. The apartment had furnishings of a contemporary design, but it was cluttered with Turnbull's work. There were files stacked on the coffee table and spread on a couch. It was clear that the living room was the nexus of his practice.
Bosch followed him to the kitchen alcove, again so he could keep a visual on him. Turnbull spoke as he filled a glass coffeepot with water.
"Which client is in the shit?" Turnbull asked.
"What do you mean?"