City of Bones

by Michael Connelly

  “Look, man, take care of me here and I’ll say whatever the fuck you want me to say. Okay? His father was an asshole. You want me to say Artie told me his father beat him with the goddamn broomstick, I’ll say it. You want it to be a baseball bat? Fine, I’ll say—”

  “I don’t want you to say anything but the truth, goddammit. Did he ever tell you that or not?”

  The door came open. They had gotten a key from the drawer at the front desk. Two men in suits came in. Gilmore, whom Bosch recognized, and another OIS detective Bosch didn’t recognize.

  “All right, this is over,” Gilmore announced. “Bosch, what the fuck are you doing?”

  “Did he?” Bosch said to Stokes.

  The other OIS detective took keys from his pocket and started taking the cuffs off of Stokes’s wrists.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Stokes started to protest. “I didn’t—”

  “Did he ever tell you?” Bosch yelled.

  “Get him out of here,” Gilmore barked to the other detective. “Put him in another room.”

  The detective physically lifted Stokes from his seat and half carried, half pushed him out of the room. Bosch’s cuffs remained on the table. Bosch stared blankly at them, thinking of the answers Stokes had given him and feeling a terrible weight on his chest from the knowledge that the whole thing had been a dead end. Stokes added nothing to the case. Julia had been shot and it was for nothing.

  He finally looked up at Gilmore, who closed the door and then turned to face Bosch.

  “Now, like I said, what the fuck were you doing, Bosch?”

  33

  GILMORE twiddled a pencil in his fingers, drumming the eraser on the table. Bosch never trusted an investigator who took notes in pencil. But that’s what the Officer Involved Shooting team was all about, making stories and facts fit the picture the department wanted to present to the public. It was a pencil squad. To get it right often meant using the pencil and eraser, never ink, never a tape recorder.

  “So we’re going to go over this again,” he said. “Tell me once more, what did Officer Brasher do?”

  Bosch looked past him. He had been moved to the suspect’s chair in the interview room. He was facing the mirror—the one-way glass behind which he was sure there were at least a half dozen people, probably including Deputy Chief Irving. He wondered if anybody had noticed that the video had been running. If they had, it would have immediately been shut off.

  “Somehow she shot herself.”

  “And you saw this.”

  “Not exactly. I saw it from the rear. Her back was to me.”

  “Then how do you know she shot herself?”

  “Because there was no one else there but her, me and Stokes. I didn’t shoot her and Stokes didn’t shoot her. She shot herself.”

  “During the struggle with Stokes.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “No, there was no struggle at the moment of the shooting. I don’t know what happened before I got there, but at the moment of the shooting Stokes had both hands flat on the wall and his back to her when the gun went off. Officer Brasher had her hand on his back, holding him in place. I saw her step back from him and drop her hand. I didn’t see the gun but I then heard the shot and saw the flash originate in front of her. And she went down.”

  Gilmore drummed his pencil loudly on the table.

  “That’s probably messing up the recording,” Bosch said. “Oh, that’s right, you guys never put anything on tape.”

  “Never mind that. Then what happened?”

  “I started moving toward them at the wall. Stokes started to turn to see what had happened. From the ground Officer Brasher raised her right arm and took aim with her weapon at Stokes.”

  “But she didn’t fire, did she?”

  “No. I yelled ‘Freeze!’ to Stokes and she did not fire and he did not move. I then moved to the scene and put Stokes on the ground. I handcuffed him. I then used the radio to call for help and tried to tend to Officer Brasher’s wound as best I could.”

  Gilmore was also chewing gum in a loud way that annoyed Bosch. He worked it for several chews before speaking.

  “See, what I’m not getting here is why would she shoot herself?”

  “You’ll have to ask her that. I’m only telling you what I saw.”

  “Yeah, but I’m asking you. You were there. What do you think?”

  Bosch waited a long moment. Things had happened so fast. He had put off thinking about the garage by concentrating on Stokes. Now the images of what he had seen kept replaying in his mind. He finally shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you what, let’s go your way with it for a minute. Let’s assume she was re-holstering her weapon—which would have been against procedures, but let’s assume it for the sake of argument. She’s reholstering so she can cuff the guy. Her holster is on her right hip and the entry wound is on the left shoulder. How does that happen?”

  Bosch thought about Brasher’s questioning him a few nights earlier about the scar on his left shoulder. About being shot and what it had felt like. He felt the room closing in, getting tight on him. He started sweating.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t know very much, do you, Bosch?”

  “I only know what I saw. I told you what I saw.”

  Bosch wished they hadn’t taken away Stokes’s pack of cigarettes.

  “What was your relationship with Officer Brasher?”

  Bosch looked down at the table.

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I hear you were fucking her. That’s what I mean.”

  “What’s it have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you tell me.”

  Bosch didn’t answer. He worked hard not to show the fury building inside.

  “Well, first off, this relationship of yours was a violation of department policy,” Gilmore said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “She’s in patrol. I’m in detective services.”

  “You think that matters? That doesn’t matter. You’re a D-three. That’s supervisor level. She’s a grunt and a rookie no less. If this was the military you’d get a dishonorable just for starters. Maybe even some custody time.”

  “But this is the LAPD. So what’s it get me, a promotion?”

  That was the first offensive move Bosch had made. It was a warning to Gilmore to go another way. It was a veiled reference to several well-known and not so well-known dalliances between high-ranking officers and members of the rank and file. It was known that the police union, which represented the rank and file to the level of sergeant, was waiting with the goods ready to challenge any disciplinary action taken under the department’s so-called sexual harassment policy.

  “I don’t need any smart remarks from you,” Gilmore said. “I’m trying to conduct an investigation here.”

  He followed this with an extended drum roll while he looked at the few notes he had written on his pad. What he was doing, Bosch knew, was conducting a reverse investigation. Start with a conclusion and then gather only the facts that support it.

  “How are your eyes?” Gilmore finally asked without looking up.

  “One of them still stings like a son of a bitch. They feel like poached eggs.”

  “Now, you say that Stokes hit you in the face with a shot from his bottle of cleaner.”

  “Correct.”

  “And it momentarily blinded you.”

  “Correct.”

  Now Gilmore stood up and started pacing in the small space behind his chair.

  “How long between the moment you were blinded and when you were down in that dark garage and supposedly saw her shoot herself?”

  Bosch thought for a moment.

  “Well, I used a hose to wash my eyes, then I followed the pursuit. I would say not more than five minutes. But not too much less.”

  “So you went from blind man to eagle scout—able to see everything—inside
of five minutes.”

  “I wouldn’t characterize it like that but you have the time right.”

  “Well, at least I got something right. Thank you.”

  “No problem, Lieutenant.”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t see the struggle for control of Officer Brasher’s gun before the shot occurred. Is that correct?”

  He had his hands clasped behind his back, the pencil between two fingers like a cigarette. Bosch leaned across the table. He understood the game of semantics Gilmore was playing.

  “Don’t play with the words, Lieutenant. There was no struggle. I saw no struggle because there was no struggle. If there had been a struggle I would have seen it. Is that clear enough for you?”

  Gilmore didn’t respond. He kept pacing.

  “Look,” Bosch said, “why don’t you just go do a GSR test on Stokes? His hands, his jumpsuit. You won’t find anything. That should end this pretty quick.”

  Gilmore came back to his chair and leaned down on it. He looked at Bosch and shook his head.

  “You know, Detective, I would love to do that. Normally in a situation like this, first thing we’d do is look for gunshot residue. The problem is, you broke the box. You took it upon yourself to take Stokes out of the crime scene and bring him back here. The chain of evidence was broken, you understand that? He could’ve washed himself, changed his clothes, I don’t know what else, because you took it upon yourself to take him from the crime scene.”

  Bosch was ready for that.

  “I felt there was a safety issue there. My partner will back me on that. So will Stokes. And he was never out of my custody and control until you came busting in here.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that you thought your case was more important than us getting the facts about a shooting of an officer of this department, does it?”

  Bosch had no answer for that. But he was now coming to a full understanding of what Gilmore was doing. It was important for him and the department to conclude and be able to announce that Brasher was shot during a struggle for control of her gun. It was heroic that way. And it was something the department public relations machine could take advantage of and run with. There was nothing like the shooting of a good cop—a female rookie, no less—in the line of duty to help remind the public of all that was good and noble about their police department and all that was dangerous about the police officer’s duty.

  The alternative, to announce that Brasher had shot herself accidentally—or even something worse—would be an embarrassment for the department. One more in a long line of public relations fiascos.

  Standing in the way of the conclusion Gilmore—and therefore Irving and the department brass—wanted was Stokes, of course, and then Bosch. Stokes was no problem. A convicted felon facing prison time for shooting a cop, whatever he said would be self-serving and unimportant. But Bosch was an eyewitness with a badge. Gilmore had to change his account or failing that, taint it. The first soft spot to attack was Bosch’s physical condition—considering what had been thrown in his eyes, could he actually have seen what he claimed to have seen? The second move was to go after Bosch the detective. In order to preserve Stokes as a witness in his murder case, would Bosch go so far as to lie about seeing Stokes shoot a cop?

  To Bosch, it was so outlandish as to be bizarre. But over the years he had seen even worse things happen to cops who had stepped in front of the machinery that produced the image of the department that was delivered to the public.

  “Wait a minute, you—” Bosch said, able to hold himself from calling a superior officer an expletive. “If you’re trying to say I would lie about Stokes shooting Julia—uh, Officer Brasher—so he would stay in the clear for my case, then you—with all due respect—are out of your fucking mind.”

  “Detective Bosch, I am exploring all possibilities here. It is my job to do so.”

  “Well, you can explore them without me.”

  Bosch stood up and went to the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m done with this.”

  He glanced at the mirror and opened the door, then looked back at Gilmore.

  “I got news for you, Lieutenant. Your theory is for shit. Stokes is nothing to my case. A zero. Julia getting shot, it was for nothing.”

  “But you didn’t know that until you got him in here, did you?”

  Bosch looked at him and then slowly shook his head.

  “Have a good day, Lieutenant.”

  He turned to go through the door and almost stepped into Irving. The deputy chief stood ramrod straight in the hallway outside the room.

  “Step back inside for a moment, Detective,” he said calmly. “Please.”

  Bosch backed into the room. Irving followed him in.

  “Lieutenant, give us some space here,” the deputy chief said. “And I want everyone out of the viewing room as well.”

  He pointed at the mirror as he said this.

  “Yes, sir,” Gilmore said and he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Take your seat again,” Irving said.

  Bosch moved back to the seat facing the mirror. Irving remained standing. After a moment he also started pacing, moving back and forth in front of the mirror, a double image for Bosch to track.

  “We are going to call the shooting accidental,” Irving said, not looking at Bosch. “Officer Brasher apprehended the suspect and while reholstering her weapon inadvertently fired the shot.”

  “Is that what she said?” Bosch asked.

  Irving looked momentarily confused, then shook his head.

  “As far as I know, she only spoke to you and you said she didn’t say anything specifically in regard to the shooting.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “So that’s the end of it?”

  “I don’t see why it should go any further.”

  Bosch thought of the photo of the shark on Julia’s mantel. About what he knew about her in such a short time with her. Again the images of what he saw in the garage played back in slow motion. And things didn’t add up.

  “If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?”

  Irving cleared his throat.

  “I am not going to debate things with you, Detective. The decision has been made.”

  “By you.”

  “Yes, by me.”

  “What about Stokes?”

  “That will be up to the District Attorney’s Office. He could be charged under the felony-murder law. His action of fleeing ultimately led to the shooting. It will get technical. If it is determined he was already in custody when the fatal shot occurred, then he might be able to—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Bosch said, coming out of his chair. “Felony-murder law? Did you say fatal shot?”

  Irving turned to face him.

  “Lieutenant Gilmore did not tell you?”

  Bosch dropped back into the chair and put his elbows on the table. He covered his face with his hands.

  “The bullet hit a bone in her shoulder and apparently ricocheted inside her body. It cut through her chest. Pierced her heart. And she was dead on arrival.”

  Bosch lowered his face so that his hands were now on top of his head. He felt himself get dizzy and he thought he might fall out of the chair. He tried to breathe deeply until it passed. After a few moments Irving spoke into the darkness of his mind.

  “Detective, there are some officers in this department they call ‘shit magnets.’ I am sure you have heard the term. Personally, I find the phrase distasteful. But its meaning is that things always seem to happen to these particular officers. Bad things. Repeatedly. Always.”

  Bosch waited in the dark for what he knew was coming.

  “Unfortunately, Detective Bosch, you are one of those officers.”

  Bosch unconsciously nodded. He was thinking about the moment that the paramedic put the breathing mask over Julia’s mouth as she was speaking.

  Don�
�t let them—

  What did she mean? Don’t let them what? He was beginning to put things together and to know what she was going to say.

  “Detective,” Irving said, his strong voice cutting through Bosch’s thoughts. “I have shown tremendous patience with you over the cases and over the years. But I have grown tired of it. So has this department. I want you to start thinking about retirement. Soon, Detective. Soon.”