“Nope, ’round here we’re usually so busy they’re lucky if they get the one.”
McCaleb nodded. He folded the photocopies and was about to put them back in his pocket when Winston took them from his hand.
“I’ll hang on to those,” she said.
She slipped the folded copies into a back pocket of her black jeans.
“Sergeant Zucker,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the kind of nice guy who would call Tafero, being that he’s former LAPD, and tip him that he had a potential fish over here in the tank, would you?”
Zucker stared at her for a moment, his face a stone.
“It’s very important, Sergeant. If you don’t tell us, it could come back on you.”
The stone cracked into a humorless smile.
“No, I’m not that kind of nice guy,” Zucker said. “And I don’t have any nice guys like that on A.M. watch. And speaking of which, I just got off shift which means I don’t have to be talking to you anymore. Have a nice day.”
He started to step away from the counter.
“One last thing,” Winston said quickly.
Zucker turned back to her.
“Were you the one who called Harry Bosch and told him Gunn was in the tank?”
Zucker nodded.
“I had a standing request from him. Any and every time Gunn was brought in here, Bosch wanted to know about it. He’d come in and talk to the guy, try to get him to say something about that old case. Bosch wouldn’t give up on it.”
“It says Gunn wasn’t booked until two-thirty,” McCaleb said. “You called Bosch in the middle of the night?”
“That was part of the deal. Bosch didn’t care what time it was. And actually, the procedure was that I would page him and then he’d call in.”
“And that’s what happened that last night?”
“Yeah, I paged and Bosch called in. I told him we had Gunn again and he came down to try to talk to him. I tried to tell him to wait until morning ’cause the guy was on his ass drunk — Gunn, I mean — but Harry came down anyway. Why are you asking so much about Harry Bosch?”
Winston didn’t answer so McCaleb jumped in.
“We’re not. We’re asking about Gunn.”
“Well, that’s all I know. Can I go home now? It’s been a long one.”
“Aren’t they all,” Winston said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
They stepped away from the counter and walked out to the front steps.
“What do you think?” Winston asked.
“He sounded legit to me. But you know what, let’s watch the employee lot for a few minutes.”
“Why?”
“Humor me. Let’s see what the sergeant drives home.”
“You’re wasting my time, Terry.”
They got into McCaleb’s Cherokee anyway and drove around the block until they came to the entrance-exit of the Hollywood station employee parking lot. McCaleb drove fifty yards past it and parked in front of a fire hydrant. He adjusted the side-view mirror so he could see any car that left the lot. They sat and waited in silence for a couple minutes until Winston spoke.
“So if we are what we drive, what’s this make you?”
McCaleb smiled.
“Never thought about it. A Cherokee . . . I guess that makes me the last of a breed or something.”
He glanced at her then looked back at the mirror.
“Yeah, and what about this coating of dust on everything, what does that —”
“Here we go. Think it’s him.”
McCaleb watched a car leave the exit and turn left in their direction.
“Coming this way.”
Neither of them moved. The car drove up and stopped right next to them. McCaleb looked over casually and his eyes met Zucker’s. The cop lowered his passenger-side window. McCaleb had no choice. He lowered his.
“You’re parked in front of a plug there, Detective. Don’t get a ticket.”
McCaleb nodded. Zucker saluted with two fingers and drove off. McCaleb noted that he was driving a Crown Victoria with commercial bumpers and wheels. It was a secondhand patrol car, the kind you pick up at auction for four hundred bucks and slap on an $ 89 . 95 paint job.
“Don’t we look like a couple of assholes,” Winston said.
“Yeah.”
“So what’s your theory about that car?”
“He’s either an honest man or he drives the beater to work because he doesn’t want people to see the Porsche.”
He paused.
“Or the Z 3 .”
He turned to her and smiled.
“Funny, Terry. Now what? Eventually, I have to get some real work done today. And I’m supposed to meet with your bureau buddies this morning as well.”
“Stick with me — and they aren’t my buddies.”
He started the Cherokee and pulled away from the curb.
“You really think this car’s dirty?” he asked.
36
The post office on Wilcox was a large World War II–era building with twenty-five-foot-high ceilings and murals depicting bucolic scenes of brotherhood and good deeds covering the upper walls. As they walked in, McCaleb’s eyes scanned the murals but not for their artistic or philosophic merit. He counted three small cameras mounted above the public areas of the office. He pointed them out to Winston. They had a chance.
They waited in line and when it was their turn Winston flashed her badge and asked for the on-site security officer. They were directed to a door next to a row of vending machines and they waited nearly five minutes before it was opened and a small black man with gray hair looked out.
“Mr. Lucas?” Winston asked.
“That’s right,” he said with a smile.
Winston showed the badge once more and introduced McCaleb simply by name. McCaleb had told her on the way over from Hollywood station that calling him an associate wasn’t working.
“We’re working a homicide investigation, Mr. Lucas, and an important piece of evidence is a money order that was purchased here and probably mailed here on December twenty-second.”
“The twenty-second? That’s right in the Christmas rush.”
“That’s right, sir.”
Winston looked at McCaleb.
“We noticed your cameras out there on the walls, Mr. Lucas,” she said. “We’d be interested in knowing if you have a videotape from the twenty-second.”
“Videotape,” Lucas said, as if the word was foreign to him.
“You are the security officer here, right?” Winston said impatiently.
“Yes, I’m the security man. I run the cameras.”
“Can you take us back and show us your surveillance system, Mr. Lucas?” McCaleb said in a gentler tone.
“Yup, sure can. Just as soon as you get authorization I’ll take you on back.”
“And how and where do we get authorization?” Winston asked.
“From L.A. Regional. Downtown.”
“Is there a specific person we talk to? We’re on a homicide investigation, Mr. Lucas. Time is of the essence.”
“That would be Mr. Preechnar — he’s a postal inspector — you would talk to. Yes.”
“Do you mind if we come back to your office and we call Mr. Preechnar together?” McCaleb asked. “It would save us a lot of time and then Mr. Preechnar could just talk directly to you.”
Lucas thought about this for a moment and decided it was a good idea. He nodded.
“Let’s see what we can do.”
Lucas opened the door and led them through a warren of huge mail baskets to a cubbyhole office with two desks squeezed together. On one of the desks was a video monitor with its screen cut into four camera views of the public area of the post office. McCaleb realized he had missed one of the cameras when he had searched the walls earlier.
Lucas ran his finger down a list of phone numbers taped to the top of the desk and made the call. Once he got ahold of his supervisor he explained the situation and then turned the phone over to Winston. She went through the
ir explanation again and then turned the phone back over to Lucas. She nodded to McCaleb. They got the approval.
“Okay, then,” Lucas said after hanging up. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.”
He reached to his hip and pulled up a ring of keys on a retractable wire attached to his belt. He went to the other side of the office and unlocked a closet door which he opened to reveal a rack of video recorders and four upper shelves of videotapes marked with the numbers one through thirty-one on each shelf. On the floor were two cartons containing fresh videotapes.
McCaleb saw all of this and suddenly realized it was January 22 , exactly one month from the day the money order was purchased.
“Mr. Lucas, stop the machines,” he said.
“Can’t do that. The machines always gotta roll. If we’re open for business, then the tapes are rolling.”
“You don’t understand. December twenty-second is the day we want. We’re taping over the day we want to look at.”
“Hold your horses, Detective McCallan. I have to explain the setup.”
McCaleb didn’t bother correcting him on the name. There wasn’t time.
“Then hurry, please.”
McCaleb looked at his watch. It was eight-forty-eight. The post office had been open for forty-eight minutes. That was forty-eight minutes of the December 22 tape erased with forty-eight minutes of the current day’s taping.
Lucas started explaining the taping procedure. One VCR for each of the four cameras. One tape in each machine at the start of each day. The cameras were set at thirty frames a minute, allowing one tape to cover the entire day. The tape for an individual day was held for a month and used again if not reserved because of an investigation by the postal inspectors service.
“We get a lot of scam artists and whatnot. You know how it is in Hollywood. We end up with a lot of tapes on reserve. The inspectors come in and get ’em. Or we send ’em on down in dispatch.”
“We understand, Mr. Lucas,” said Winston, an urgent tone in her voice as she apparently came to the same realization as McCaleb. “Can you please turn off the machines or replace the tapes in them. We are taping over what could be valuable evidence.”
“Right away,” Lucas said.
But he proceeded to reach into the carton of new tapes and take out four cassettes. He then peeled labels off a dispenser roll and put them on the tapes. He took a pen from behind his ear and wrote the date and some sort of coding on the labels. Then, finally, he started popping tapes out of the VCRs and replacing them with the new cassettes.
“Now, how do you want to do this? These tapes are post office property. They are not leaving the premises. I can set you up over here at the desk. I’ve got a portable TV with built-in VCR if you want to use it.”
“Are you sure we just can’t borrow them for the day?” Winston said. “I could have them back by —”
“Not without a court order. That’s what Mr. Preechnar told me. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Then I guess we don’t have a choice,” Winston said, looking at McCaleb and shaking her head in frustration.
While Lucas went to get the TV, McCaleb and Winston decided that McCaleb would stay and watch the videotape while Winston went to her office for an 11 A.M. meeting with the bureau men, Twilley and Friedman. She said she would not be mentioning McCaleb’s new investigation or the possibility that his earlier focus on Bosch might have been in error. She would return the copied murder book and crime scene tape.
“I know you don’t believe in coincidences but that’s all you have at the moment, Terry. You come up with something on the tape and I’ll bring it to the captain and we’ll blow Twilley and Friedman out of the water. But until you have it . . . I’m still in the doghouse and need something more than a coincidence to look anywhere other than at Bosch.”
“What about the call to Tafero?”
“What call?”
“Somehow he knew Gunn was in the tank and he came and bailed him out — so they could kill him that night and pin it on Bosch.”
“I don’t know about the call — if it wasn’t Zucker, it was probably somebody else in the station he’s got a sweetheart deal with. And the rest of what you just said is pure speculation without a single fact backing it up.”
“I think it’s —”
“Stop, Terry. I don’t want to hear it until you have something backing it up. I’m going to work.”
As if on cue, Lucas came back pushing a cart with a small television on top of it.
“I’ll set you up with this,” he said.
“Mr. Lucas, I need to go to an appointment,” Winston said. “My colleague is going to look at the tapes. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Happy to be of service, ma’am.”
Winston looked at McCaleb.
“Call me.”
“You want me to drive you back to your car?”
“It’s just a few blocks. I’ll walk it.”
He nodded.
“Happy hunting,” she said.
McCaleb nodded. She had said that to him once before on a case that had not turned out so happily for him.
37
Langwiser and Kretzler told Bosch they were going ahead with the plan to rest their case by the close of the day.
“We got him,” Kretzler said, smiling and enjoying the adrenaline ride that came with making the decision to pull the trigger. “By the time we’re done he’ll be tied down nine ways till Sunday. We’ve got Hendricks and Crowe today. We’ve got everything we need.”
“Except motive,” Bosch said.
“Motive is not going to be important with a crime that is obviously the work of a psychopath,” Langwiser said. “Those jurors aren’t going to go back into their little room at the end of this and say, ‘Yeah, but what was his motive?’ They’re going to say this guy is a sick fuck and —”
Her voice dropped to a whisper when the judge entered the courtroom through the door behind the bench.
“ — we’re going to put him away.”
The judge called for the jury and after a few minutes the prosecutors were putting on their last witnesses of the trial.
The first three witnesses were film business people who had attended the premiere party on the night of Jody Krementz’s death. Each testified to having seen David Storey at the film premiere and the following party with a woman they identified from exhibit photos as Jody Krementz. The fourth witness, a screenwriter named Brent Wiggan, testified that he left the premiere party a few minutes before midnight and that he waited at the valet stand for his car along with David Storey and a woman he also identified as Jody Krementz.
“Why are you so sure it was just a few minutes before midnight, Mr. Wiggan?” Kretzler asked. “It was, after all, a party. Were you watching the clock?”
“One question at a time, Mr. Kretzler,” the judge barked.
“Sorry, Your Honor. Why are you so sure it was a few minutes before midnight, Mr. Wiggan?”
“Because I was watching the clock, actually,” Wiggan said. “My watch, that is. I do my writing at night. I am most productive from midnight until six. So I was watching the clock, knowing I had to get back to my house at close to midnight or I would fall behind in my work.”
“Would that also mean you were not drinking alcoholic beverages at the premiere party?”
“That is correct. I wasn’t drinking because I didn’t want to become tired or have my creativity dampened. People don’t usually drink before they go to work at a bank or as a plane pilot — well, I guess most of them don’t.”
He paused until the titters of laughter subsided. The judge looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. Wiggan looked like he was enjoying his moment of attention. Bosch started feeling uneasy.
“I don’t drink before I go on the job,” Wiggan finally continued. “Writing is a craft but it is also a job and I treat it as such.”
“So are you crystal clear in your memory and identification of who David Storey was w
ith at a few minutes before midnight?”
“Absolutely.”
“And David Storey, you personally already knew him, correct?”
“Yes, that’s true. For several years.”
“Have you ever worked for David Storey on a film project?”
A Darkness More Than Night (2000) Page 31