Trunk Music

by Michael Connelly

  “Funny thing, those agents didn’t bother talking to me. They just came in and got a copy of the protocol. The protocol only has conclusions, none of the ruminating we doctors like to do.”

  “So what would you have ruminated about with them if they had talked to you?”

  “I would have told them my hunch, Harry.”

  “Which is?”

  Salazar looked up from the body but kept his rubber-gloved and bloody hands over the open chest so they wouldn’t drip on anything else.

  “My hunch is that you’re looking for a woman.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The material in and below the eyes.”

  “Preparation H?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind. What did you find?”

  “The substance was analyzed and it came back oleo capsicum. Found it on the nasal swabs, too. Know what oleo capsicum is better known as, Harry?”

  “Pepper spray.”

  “Shit, Harry, you ruin my fun.”

  “Sorry. So somebody sprayed him with pepper spray?”

  “Right again. That’s why I think it’s a woman. Someone who was either having problems controlling him or afraid of problems. That makes me think it’s a woman. Besides, all these women around here, they all carry that stuff in their purses.”

  Bosch wondered if Veronica Aliso was one of those women.

  “That’s good, Sally. Anything else?”

  “No surprises. Tests came back clean.”

  “No amyl nitrate?”

  “Nope, but that has a short retention. We don’t find it that often. Did you get anywhere with the slugs?”

  “Yeah, we did all right. Can you call your guy?”

  “Take me to the intercom.”

  While Salazar held his hands up in front of himself so they wouldn’t touch anything, Bosch pushed his wheelchair to the nearby counter, where there was a phone with an intercom attachment. Salazar told Bosch which button to push and then ordered someone to make a copy of the protocol immediately for Bosch.

  “Thanks,” Bosch said.

  “No problem. Hope it helps. Remember, look for a woman who carries pepper spray in her purse. Not mace. Pepper spray.”

  “Right.”

  The end-of-the-week traffic was intense and it took Bosch nearly an hour to get out of downtown and back to Hollywood. When he got to the Cat & Fiddle pub on Sunset it was after six, and as he walked through the gate he saw Edgar and Rider already sitting at a table in the open-air courtyard. There was a pitcher of beer on their table. And they weren’t alone. Sitting at the table with them was Grace Billets.

  The Cat & Fiddle was a popular drinking spot with the Hollywood cops because it was only a few blocks from the station on Wilcox. So Bosch didn’t know as he approached the table whether Billets happened to be there by coincidence or because she knew of their freelance operation.

  “Howdy, folks,” Bosch said as he sat down.

  There was one empty glass on the table and he filled it from the pitcher. He then held the glass up to the others and toasted to the end of another week.

  “Harry,” Rider said, “the lieutenant knows what we’ve been doing. She’s here to help.”

  Bosch nodded and slowly looked at Billets.

  “I’m disappointed that you didn’t come to me first,” she said. “But I understand what you are doing. I agree that it might be in the bureau’s best interest to let this lie and not endanger their case. But a man was murdered. If they’re not going to look for the killer, I don’t see why we shouldn’t.”

  Bosch nodded. He was almost speechless. He’d never had a boss who wasn’t a rigid by-the-book man. Grace Billets was a major change.

  “Of course,” she said, “we have to be very careful. We screw this up and we’ll have more than just the FBI mad at us.”

  The unspoken message was that their careers were at stake here.

  “Well, my position’s already pretty much shot,” Bosch said. “So if anything goes wrong, I want you all to lay it on me.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Rider said.

  “No, it’s not. You all are going places. I’m not going anywhere. Hollywood is it for me and all of us here know it. So if this thing hits the fan, back out. I’ll take the heat. If you can’t agree to that, I want you to back out now.”

  There was silence for a few moments, and then one by one the other three nodded.

  “Okay, then,” he said, “you may have told the lieutenant what you’ve been doing, but I’d like to hear it myself.”

  “We’ve come up with a few things, not a lot,” Rider said. “Jerry went up the hill to see Nash while I worked the computer and talked to a friend at the Times. First off, I ran Tony Aliso’s TRW credit report and got Veronica’s Social Security number off that. I then ran that through the Department of Social Security computer to try and get a work history and found out that Veronica is not her real name. The Social comes back to Jennifer Gilroy, born forty-one years ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. No wonder she said she hated Vegas. She grew up there.”

  “Any work history?”

  “Nothing until she came out here and worked for TNA Productions.”

  “What else?”

  Before she could answer, there was a loud commotion near the glass door to the interior bar. The door opened and a large man in a bartender’s jacket pushed a smaller man through. The smaller man was disheveled and drunk and yelling something about the lack of respect he was getting. The bartender roughly walked him to the courtyard gate and pushed him through. As soon as the bartender turned to go back to the bar, the drunk spun around and started back in. The bartender turned around and pushed him so hard he fell backward onto the seat of his pants. Now embarrassed, he threatened to come back and get the bartender. A few people at some of the outside tables snickered. The drunk got up and staggered out to the street.

  “They start early around here,” Billets said. “Go ahead, Kiz.”

  “Anyway, I did an NCIC run. Jennifer Gilroy got picked up twice in Vegas for soliciting. This is going back more than twenty years. I called over there and had them ship us the mugs and reports. It’s all on fiche and they have to dig it out, so we won’t get it till next week. There probably won’t be much there, anyway. According to the computer, neither case went to court. She pleaded out and paid a fine each time.”

  Bosch nodded. It sounded like a routine disposal of routine cases.

  “That’s all I’ve got on that. As far as the Times goes, there was nothing on the search. And my friend at Variety didn’t do much better. Veronica Aliso was barely mentioned in the review of Casualty of Desire. Both she and the movie were panned, but I’d like to see it anyway. Do you still have the tape, Harry?”

  “On my desk.”

  “Does she get naked in it?” Edgar asked. “If she does, I’d like to see it, too.”

  He was ignored.

  “Okay, what else?” Rider said. “Uh, Veronica also got a couple mentions in stories about movie premieres and who attended. It wasn’t a lot. When you said she had fifteen minutes, I think you confused minutes with seconds. Anyway, that’s it from me. Jerry?”

  Edgar cleared his throat and explained that he had gone up to the gatehouse at Hidden Highlands and run into a problem when Nash insisted on a new search warrant to look at the complete gate log. Edgar said he then spent the afternoon typing up the search warrant and hunting for a judge who hadn’t left early for the weekend. He eventually was successful and had a signed warrant which he planned to deliver the next morning.

  “Kiz and I are goin’ up there in the morning. We’ll get a look at the gate log and then we’re probably going to hit some of the neighbors, do some interviews. Like you said, we’re hopin’ the widow will look out her window and catch our act, maybe get a little spooked. Maybe panic, make a mistake.”

  It was then Bosch’s turn, and he recounted his afternoon efforts, including his run-in with Roy Lindell and the agent’s recollectio
n that Veronica Aliso had started her show business career as a stripper in Vegas. He also discussed Salazar’s finding that Tony Aliso had been hit in the face with a blast of pepper spray shortly before his death and shared the deputy coroner’s hunch that it might have been a woman who sprayed him.

  “Does he think she could have pulled this off by herself after hitting him with the pepper spray?” Billets asked.

  “It doesn’t matter, because she wasn’t alone,” Bosch answered.

  He pulled his briefcase onto his lap and took out the copies of the shoe prints Donovan had recovered from the body and the bumper of the Rolls. He slid the pages to the middle of the table so the three others could look.

  “That’s a size eleven shoe. It belongs to a man, Artie says. A big man. So the woman, if she was there, could have sprayed him with the pepper, but this guy finished the job.”

  Bosch pointed to the shoe prints.

  “He put his foot right on the victim so he could lean in close and do the job point-blank. Very cool and very efficient. Probably a pro. Maybe someone she knew since her Vegas days.”

  “Probably the one who planted the gun in Vegas?” Billets asked.

  “That’s my guess.”

  Bosch had been keeping his eye on the front gate of the courtyard, just in case the drunk who had been tossed out decided to come back and make his point. But when he glanced over now, he didn’t see the drunk. He saw Officer Ray Powers, wearing mirrored glasses despite the lateness of the day, entering the courtyard and being met halfway across by the bartender. Waving his arms in an animated fashion, the bartender told the big cop about the drunk and the threats. Powers glanced around at the tables and saw Bosch and the others. When he had disengaged from the bartender he sauntered over.

  “So, the detective bureau brain trust takes five,” he said.

  “That’s right, Powers,” Edgar said. “I think the guy you’re looking for is out there pissing in the bushes.”

  “Yes, suh, I’ll jus’ go out there ’n’ fetch him, boss.”

  Powers looked around the table at the others with a satisfied smirk on his face. He saw the copies of the shoe prints on the table and pointed at them with his chin.

  “Is this what you dicks call an investigative strategy session? Well, I’ll give you a tip. Those there are what they call shoe prints.”

  He smiled at his remark, proud of it.

  “We’re off duty, Powers,” Billets said. “Why don’t you go do your job and we’ll worry about ours.”

  Powers saluted her.

  “Somebody’s got to do the job, don’t they?”

  He walked away and out through the gate without waiting for a reply.

  “He’s got one hell of a bug up his ass,” Rider said.

  “He’s just mad because I told his lieutenant about the fingerprint he left on our car,” Billets said. “I think he got his ass chewed. Anyway, back to business. What do you think, Harry? Do we have enough to take a hard run at Veronica?”

  “I think we almost do. I’m going to go up there with these guys tomorrow, see what’s on the gate log. Maybe we’ll pay her a visit. I just wish we had something concrete to talk to her about.”

  Billets nodded.

  “I want to be kept informed tomorrow. Call me by noon.”

  “Will do.”

  “The more time that goes by on this, the harder it will be to keep this investigation among just us. I think by Monday we’re going to have to take stock and decide whether to turn what we have over to the bureau.”

  “I don’t see that,” Bosch said, shaking his head. “Whatever we give them, they’re just going to sit on. If you want to clear this, you’ve got to let us alone, keep the bureau off us.”

  “I will try, Harry, but there will come a point where that will be impossible. We’re running a full-scale investigation off the books here. Word’s going to get out. It has to. And all I’m saying is that it will be better if that word comes from me and can be controlled.”

  Bosch nodded reluctantly. He knew she was right but he had to fight her suggestion. The case belonged to them. It was his. And all that had happened to him in the last week made it all the more personal. He didn’t want to give it up.

  He gathered up the copies of the shoe prints and put them back in his briefcase. He finished the last of his glass of beer and asked who and what he owed for it.

  “It’s on me,” Billets said. “The next one, after we clear this, is on you.”

  “It’s a deal.”

  When Bosch got to his house he found the door locked, but the key he had given Eleanor Wish was under the front mat. The first thing he checked when he got inside was the Hopper print. It was still there on the wall. But she was gone. He made a quick scan of the rooms and found no note. He checked the closet and her clothes were gone. So was her suitcase.

  He sat on the bed and thought about her leaving. That morning they had left things open. He had risen early and, while she was still in bed, watching him get ready for the day, he’d asked her what she was going to do during the day. She had told him she didn’t know.

  Now she was gone. He rubbed a hand over his face. He was already beginning to feel the loss of her and he replayed in his mind their conversations of the night before. He had played it wrong, he decided. It had cost her something to tell him of her complicity. And he had only evaluated it in terms of what it meant to him and to his case. Not to her. Not to them.

  Bosch leaned back until he was lying across the bed. He spread his arms and stared up at the ceiling. He could feel the beer working inside him, making him tired.

  “Okay,” he said out loud.

  He wondered if she would call or if another five years would go by before he saw her again by happenstance. He thought about how much had happened to him in the past five years and how long a wait that had been. His body ached. He closed his eyes.

  “Okay.”

  He fell asleep and dreamed about being alone in a desert with no roads and miles of open, desolate country ahead of him in every direction he looked.

  VI

  BOSCH PICKED UP two containers of coffee and two glazed doughnuts from Bob’s in the farmers market at seven Saturday morning, then drove to the clearing where Tony Aliso’s body had been found in the trunk of his car. As he ate and drank, he looked out on the marine layer shrouding the quiet city below. The sun rising behind the towers of downtown cast them as opaque monoliths in the haze. It was beautiful but Bosch felt as though he were the only one in the world seeing it.

  When he had finished eating, he used a napkin he had wet in the water fountain at the farmers market to clean the sticky residue of sugar off his fingers. He then stuffed all the papers and the first empty coffee cup back into the doughnut bag and started the car.

  Bosch had fallen asleep early Friday evening and awakened in his clothes before sunrise. He felt the need to get out of the house and do something. He had always believed that you could make things happen in an investigation by staying busy and with hard work. He decided that he would use the morning to try to find the spot where Tony Aliso’s Rolls-Royce was intercepted and pulled over by his killers.

  He concluded for a couple of reasons that the abduction had to have taken place on Mulholland Drive near the entrance to Hidden Highlands. First, the clearing where the car had been found was off Mulholland. If the abduction had taken place near the airport, it was likely the car would have been dumped near the airport, not fifteen miles away. And second, the abduction could be done more easily and quietly up on Mulholland in the dark. The airport and the surrounding area were always congested with traffic and people and would have presented too much of a risk.

  The next question was whether Aliso had been followed from the airport or his killers simply waited for him at the abduction spot on Mulholland. Bosch decided on the latter, figuring that it was a small operation—two people, tops—and a tail and vehicle stop would be too iffy a proposition, particularly in Los Angeles, where every
owner of a Rolls-Royce would be acutely aware of the danger of carjackings. He thought that they had waited on Mulholland and somehow created a trap or scene that made Aliso stop his car, even though he was carrying $480,000 in cash in his briefcase. And Bosch guessed that the only way Aliso would make such a stop was if that scenario involved his wife. In his mind Bosch saw the headlights of the Rolls-Royce sweeping around a curve and illuminating a frantically waving Veronica Aliso. Tony would stop for that.

  Bosch knew that the waiting spot had to be on a place on Mulholland they were sure Tony would pass. There were only two logical routes from the airport to Mulholland Drive and then to the gatehouse at Hidden Highlands. One way would be to go north on the 405 freeway and simply take the Mulholland Drive exit. The other way would have been to take La Cienega Boulevard from the airport north to Laurel Canyon and up the hill to Mulholland.