Trunk Music

by Michael Connelly

  Zane reached out a hand in front of Bosch to stop him from answering.

  “What is this shit, Chastain?”

  “Who have you been talking to, Chastain?” Bosch added.

  “Wait a minute, Harry,” Zane said. “Don’t say anything. Where’s this going, Chastain?”

  “It’s very clear from the orders from the chief. I’m investigating Bosch’s conduct during this investigation. As far as who I have been talking to or where I get my information, you are not privy to that at this point in the process.”

  “This is supposed to be about a supposedly planted gun that we all know is bullshit. That’s what we are here to answer.”

  “Do you wish to read the order from the chief again? It’s quite clear.”

  Zane looked at him a moment.

  “Give us five minutes so we can talk about this. Why don’t you go get the points of your teeth filed?”

  Chastain stood up and reached over and turned the tape recorder off. As he stepped to the door, he looked back at them with a smile.

  “This time I got you both. You won’t get out from under this one, Bosch. And Zane, well, I guess you can’t win them all, can you?”

  “You ought to know that better than me, you sanctimonious asshole. Get out of here and leave us alone.”

  After Chastain was gone, Zane bent over the tape recorder to make sure it was off. He then got up and checked the thermostat on the wall to make sure it wasn’t a secret listening device. After he was satisfied their conversation was private, he sat back down and asked Bosch about Eleanor Wish. Bosch told him about his encounters with Eleanor over the past few days but left out mention of the abduction and her subsequent confession.

  “One of those cops over there in Metro must’ve told him you shacked up with her,” Zane said. “That’s all he’s got. He’s going for an associating beef. If you admit it here, then he’s got you. But if that’s all he gets, then it’s a slap on the wrist at best. As long as he gets nothing else. But if you lie about it and say you weren’t with her when you were, and he can prove you were, then you’ve got a problem. So my advice is that you tell him, yeah, you know her and you’ve been with her. Fuck it, it’s nothing. Tell him it’s over, and if that’s all he’s got, then he’s a chickenshit asshole.”

  “I don’t know if it is or it isn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Over.”

  “Well, don’t tell him nothin’ about that unless he asks for it. Then use your best judgment. Ready?”

  Bosch nodded and Zane opened the door. Chastain was sitting outside at a desk.

  “Where ya been, Chastain?” Zane complained. “We’re waiting in here.”

  Chastain didn’t answer. He came in, turned the recorder back on and continued the Q and A.

  “Yes, I know Eleanor Wish,” Bosch said. “Yes, I’ve spent time with her over the last few days.”

  “How much time?”

  “I don’t know exactly. A couple of nights.”

  “While you were conducting the investigation?”

  “Not while I was conducting it. At night, when I was done for the day. We all don’t work around the clock like you, Chastain.”

  Bosch smiled at him without humor.

  “Was she a witness in this case?” Chastain asked with a tone that denoted that he was shocked that Bosch would cross that line.

  “Initially, I thought she might be a witness. After I located her and talked to her, I learned pretty quickly that she was not an evidentiary witness of any kind.”

  “But you did initially encounter her while you were in your capacity as an investigator on this case.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Chastain consulted his pad for a long moment before asking the next question.

  “Is this woman, that’s the convicted felon Eleanor Wish I am still talking about, is she living in your home at this time?”

  Bosch felt the bile rising in his throat. The personal invasion and Chastain’s tone were getting to him. He struggled to remain calm.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.

  “You don’t know if someone is living in your house or not?”

  “Look, Chastain, she was there last night, okay? Is that what you want to hear? She was there. But whether she’ll be there tonight I don’t know. She’s got her own place in Vegas. She may have gone back today, I don’t know. I didn’t check. You want me to call and ask her if she is officially living in my home at this time, I will.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary. I think I have everything I need for the time being.”

  He then went directly into the standard IAD end-of-interview spiel.

  “Detective Bosch, you will be informed of the results of the ongoing investigation into your conduct. If departmental charges are filed, you will be informed of the scheduling of a Board of Rights hearing in which three captains will hear evidence. You will be allowed to choose one of those captains, I will select a second and the third will be chosen at random. Any questions?”

  “Just one. How can you call yourself a cop when all you do is sit up here and conduct these bullshit investigations into bullshit?”

  Zane reached over and put a hand on Bosch’s forearm to quiet him.

  “No, that’s okay,” Chastain said, waving off Zane’s effort to calm things. “I don’t mind answering. In fact, I get that question a lot, Bosch. Funny, but it always seems I get it from the cops I happen to be investigating. Anyway, the answer is that I take pride in what I do because I represent the public, and if there is no one to police the police then there is no one to keep the abuse of their wide powers in check. I serve a valuable purpose in this society, Detective Bosch. I’m proud of what I do. Can you say the same?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bosch said. “I’m sure that sounds great on tape for whoever listens to it. I get the feeling you probably sit alone at night and listen to it yourself. Over and over again. After a while, you believe it. But let me ask you this, Chastain. Who polices the police who police the police?”

  Bosch stood up and Zane followed. The interview was over.

  After leaving IAD and thanking Zane for his help, Bosch went down to the SID lab on the third floor to see Art Donovan. The criminologist had just come back from a crime scene and was sorting through evidence bags and checking the material against an evidence list. He looked up as Bosch was approaching.

  “How’d you get in here, Harry?”

  “I know the combination.”

  Most detectives who worked RHD knew the door-lock combo. Bosch hadn’t worked RHD in five years and they still hadn’t changed it.

  “See,” Donovan said. “That’s how the trouble starts.”

  “What trouble?”

  “You coming in here while I’m handling evidence. Next thing you know some wiseass defense lawyer says it got tainted and I look like an asshole on national TV.”

  “You’re paranoid, Artie. Besides, we’re not due for another trial of the century for at least a few years.”

  “Funny. What do you want, Harry?”

  “You’re the second guy who said I was funny today. What happened with my shoe prints and all the rest of the stuff?”

  “The Aliso case?”

  “No, the Lindbergh case. What do you think?”

  “Well, I heard that Aliso wasn’t yours anymore. I’m supposed to have everything ready for the FBI to pick up.”

  “When is that?”

  Donovan looked up from what he was doing for the first time.

  “They just said they’d send somebody by five.”

  “Then it’s still my case until they show up. What about the shoe prints you pulled?”

  “There’s nothing about them. I sent copies to the bureau’s crime lab in D.C. to see if they could ID the make and model.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I haven’t heard back. Bosch, every department in the country sends shit to them. You know that. And last I heard, th
ey don’t drop everything they’re doing when a package from the LAPD comes in. It will probably be next week sometime before I hear back. If I’m lucky.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’s too late to call the East Coast now, anyway. Maybe Monday. I didn’t know they suddenly became so important to you. Communication, Harry, that’s the secret. You ought to try it sometime.”

  “Never mind that, do you still have a set of copies?”

  “Yup.”

  “Can I get a set?”

  “Sure can, but you’re going to have to wait about twenty minutes or so till I’m done with this.”

  “Come on, Artie, it’s probably just sitting in a file cabinet or something. It’ll take you thirty seconds.”

  “Would you leave me alone?” Donovan said with exasperation. “I’m serious, Harry. Yes, it’s sitting in a file and it would only take me half a minute to get it for you. But if I leave what I’m doing here, I could get crucified when I testify in this case. I can see it now, some shyster all righteous and angry and saying, ‘You are telling this jury that while in the middle of handling evidence from this case you got up and handled evidence from another?’ And you don’t have to be F. Lee Bailey anymore to make it sound good to a jury. Now leave me alone. Come back in a half hour.”

  “Fine, Artie, I’ll leave you alone.”

  “And buzz me when you come back. Don’t just come in. We gotta get that combination changed.”

  The last line he said more to himself than to Bosch.

  Bosch left the way he had come in and took the elevator down to go outside and have a smoke. He had to walk out to the curb and light up because it was now against departmental rules to stand outside the front door of Parker Center and smoke. So many cops working there were addicted to cigarettes that there had often been a crowd outside the building’s main doors and a permanent haze of blue smoke had begun to hang over the entrance. The chief thought this was unsightly and instituted the rule that if you left the building to smoke, you had to leave the property as well. Now the front sidewalk along Los Angeles Street often looked like the scene of a labor action, with cops, some even in uniform, pacing back and forth in front of the building. The only thing missing from the scene was picket signs. The word was that the police chief had consulted with the city attorney to see if he could outlaw smoking on the sidewalk as well, but he was told that the sidewalk was beyond the bounds of his control.

  As Bosch was lighting a second cigarette off the first, he saw the huge figure of FBI agent Roy Lindell waltzing leisurely out of the glass doors of the police headquarters. When he got to the sidewalk, he turned right and headed toward the federal courthouse. He was coming directly toward Bosch. Lindell didn’t see Bosch until he was a few feet away. It startled him.

  “What is this? Are you waiting for me?”

  “No, I’m having a cigarette, Lindell. What are you doing?”

  “None of your business.”

  He made a move to pass but Bosch stopped him with the next line.

  “Have a nice chat with Chastain?”

  “Look, Bosch, I was asked to come over and give a statement and I obliged. I told the truth. Let the chips fall.”

  “Trouble is you don’t know the truth.”

  “I know you found that gun and I didn’t put it there. That’s the truth.”

  “Part of it, at least.”

  “Well, it’s the only part I know, and that’s what I told him. So have a good day.”

  He passed by Bosch and Harry turned around to watch him go. Once again he stopped him.

  “You people might be satisfied with only part of the truth. But I’m not.”

  Lindell turned around and stepped back to Bosch.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it out.”

  “No, you tell me.”

  “We were all used, Lindell. I’m going to find out by who. When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Look, Bosch, you don’t have the case anymore. We’re working it and you better stay the fuck away from it.”

  “Yeah, you guys are working the case, all right,” Bosch said sarcastically. “I’m sure you’re pounding the pavement on this one. Let me know when you figure it out.”

  “Bosch, it’s not like that. We care about it.”

  “Give me one answer, Lindell.”

  “What?”

  “In the time you were under, did Tony Aliso ever bring his wife over there to make a pickup?”

  Lindell was quiet a moment while he decided whether to answer. He finally shook his head.

  “Not once,” he said. “Tony always said she hated the place. Too many bad memories, I guess.”

  Bosch tried to remain cool.

  “Memories of Vegas?”

  Lindell smiled.

  “For somebody who supposedly has all the answers, you don’t know much, do you, Bosch? Tony met her in the club something like twenty years ago. Long before my time. She was a dancer and Tony was going to make her a movie star. Same story he was using on ’em to the end. Only, after her I guess he got wise and learned not to marry every one of them.”

  “Did she know Joey Marks?”

  “Your one question is now up to three, Bosch.”

  “Did she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was her name back then?”

  “That’s another one I don’t know. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”

  He turned and walked away. Bosch threw his cigarette into the street and walked back toward the Glass House. A few minutes later, after being properly buzzed through the door into the SID offices, Bosch found Donovan at his desk again. The criminalist lifted a thin file from the desk and handed it to Harry.

  “You got copies in there,” he said. “Same thing I sent the bureau. What I did was shoot a copy of the negative and then shot the new negative and printed it in black-and-white contrast for comparison purposes. I also blew it up to actual size.”

  Bosch didn’t understand what Donovan had just said except for the last part. He opened the file. There were two pages of copy paper with the shoe prints in black. Both were partial prints of the same right shoe. But between the two partials almost all of the shoe was there. Donovan got up and looked at the open file. He pointed to a tread ridge on one of the copies. It was a curving line on the heel. But the line was broken.

  “Now, if you find the shooter and he still has the shoes, this is where you’ll get him. See how that line is broken there? That does not appear to be a manufacturer’s design. This guy stepped on glass or something at some point and it cut the tread there. It’s either that or a flaw in manufacturing. But if you find the shoe, we’ll be able to make an ID match that should send the boy away.”

  “Okay,” Bosch said, still looking at the copies. “Now, did you get anything even preliminary from the bureau on this?”

  “Not really. I’ve got a guy I go to pretty regularly with this kind of stuff. I know him, seen him at a couple of the SID conventions. Anyway, he called just to let me know he got the package and he’d get on it as soon as he could. He said that off the top of his head he thought it was one of those lightweight boots that are popular now. You know, they’re like work boots but they’re comfortable and wear like a pair of Nikes.”

  “Okay, Artie, thanks.”

  Bosch drove over to the County-USC Medical Center and around to the parking lot by the railroad yard. The coroner’s office was located at the far end of the medical center property, and Bosch went in through the back door after showing his badge to a security guard.

  He checked Dr. Salazar’s office first but it was empty. He then went down to the autopsy floor and looked in the first suite, where the lowered table that Salazar always used was located. Salazar was there, working on another body. Bosch stepped in and Salazar looked up from the open chest cavity of what looked like the remains of a young black man.

  “Harry, what are you doing here? This is a South Bureau ca
se.”

  “I wanted to ask about the Aliso case.”

  “Kind of got my hands full at the moment. And you shouldn’t be in here without a mask and gown.”

  “I know. You think you could have your assistant dub off a copy of the protocol for me?”

  “No problem. I heard the FBI took an interest in the case, Harry. Is that true?”

  “That’s what I hear.”