The Night Fire

by Michael Connelly

  “Sounds like our girl. I’d like to see the video.”

  Kenworth gave that his usual pause.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Ballard prompted. “We can help each other here. If it’s the same woman, we have something big. Give me your e-mail and I’ll send you what we’ve got. You send me what you have. This is what cooperating police agencies do.”

  “I think that will be all right,” Kenworth finally said. “But we don’t have her face. In a city of cameras, she seemed to know where every one of them was placed.”

  “Same here. What’s your e-mail? I’ll send you the first video. You send me back yours and then I’ll send you our second. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  After disconnecting, Ballard uploaded the video from Mako’s that showed the suspect buying the bottle of Tito’s and using the ATM. On the e-mail to Kenworth, she wrote Black Widow in the subject line because that was the name Ballard had come up with for the dark-haired, darkly dressed version of the suspected killer.

  Kenworth carried his telephone manners into his e-mail etiquette: after a half hour, Ballard had received nothing in return from the Las Vegas detective. She was beginning to feel she had been ripped off and was about to call him when a return e-mail came in with the Black Widow subject line. It had two videos labeled CLEO1 and CLEO2 attached. The only message in the e-mail said: “The car in Cleo2 was stolen, set on fire in Summerland.”

  Ballard downloaded and watched the videos.

  The first was a camera trail that showed a man in a Jimmy Buffett shirt playing blackjack at a high-roller table at the Cleopatra. Ballard assumed he was the victim-to-be. The woman sitting next to him was not playing any hands. She had long and full blond hair that appeared to be a wig. Its thick bangs acted like a visor, shielding her downward-tilted face from camera capture.

  The man cashed in his chips, then the camera angles changed as the couple left the table and headed to the elevator reserved for tower suites. The woman kept her head down and away from any camera. She carried what appeared to be a large white overnight bag slung over one of her shoulders and she was wearing black parachute pants and a halter top. The last capture shown on the video was the couple in the elevator, the 42 button on the panel glowing as they rode up. The time stamp on the elevator shot showed them getting off on the forty-second floor at 01:12:54 and then the video ended.

  Ballard went to CLEO2. This video began with the elevator camera and a time stamp of 01:34:31 and showed a woman getting aboard on the forty-second floor. She was wearing a wide-brimmed hat that totally obscured her face. Only a small fringe of black hair could be seen going down her back. She was wearing black slacks, blouse, and sandals. The overnight bag strapped over her shoulder was black but had the same dimensions as the one seen in the CLEO1 video.

  The woman got off the elevator at the casino level and the cameras followed her through the vast gaming space and out the doors to a parking garage. She walked down a parking aisle, got into a silver Porsche SUV, and drove away.

  Thanks to Kenworth’s message, Ballard knew the fate of the Porsche.

  Ballard reversed the video and watched the woman walk down the parking aisle again. She noted the gait was slightly intoed.

  “Black Widow,” Ballard whispered.

  Making good on her deal, she uploaded the video from Grand Park and sent it to Kenworth with a message:

  It’s the same woman in your videos. Three 187s now. We need to talk.

  After sending it, she realized 187 might not be the penal code number for murder in Nevada. She also realized that not only did Vegas Metro and LAPD need to talk, but LAPD needed to talk among themselves. The case had reached a point where she needed to bring Olivas up to date and put the need for interagency cooperation with Vegas on his plate.

  But before she did that she had to tell her own partner.

  Ballard called Bosch and he picked up immediately. But his voice was drowned out by the background noise of traffic and a blaring siren. She managed to hear him yell, “Hold on.”

  She waited as he apparently rolled up the windows of his car and put in earbuds.

  “Renée?”

  “Harry, where are you? What’s going on?”

  “Heading to Bunker Hill behind an RA. Clayton Manley just went down thirty-two floors without an elevator.”

  “Oh, shit. He jumped?”

  “That’s what they’re saying. Who knows? RHD is taking it. Gustafson and Reyes. I’m heading there, see what I can find out.”

  “Listen, Harry, be careful. This thing is coming together. I’ve been talking to Vegas Metro. They have a case over there, a murder. They sent video and it’s our girl. The Black Widow.”

  “That’s what they call her?”

  “No, actually, I called her that when I sent them our videos.”

  “What’s the case over there?”

  “Mob-related. Some OC guy from Miami checked into the Cleopatra but didn’t check out. It was a suicide setup—like he swallowed a bullet. But they have him on video going up to the room with the Black Widow. Then she comes down, different wig, different look. But she has the walk. It’s her. I’m sure.”

  There was a silence, but with Bosch, Ballard was used to it.

  “Fake suicide,” he finally said.

  “Like with Manley,” Ballard said. “But why is RHD taking it if it’s a suicide—supposedly?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe what I’ve been telling Reyes made them put Manley back on their radar. I was in the middle of telling him how they’d missed Manley when he got the call. Anyway, I’m pulling in. I’m going to see if I can get up to the firm.”

  “Harry, she could be up there. Or at least still in the vicinity.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, if they felt the need to get rid of Manley, they might feel the same about you. You’re the one who went in there and stirred things up.”

  “I know.”

  “So don’t go in. Just wait for me there. I’m on my way.”

  BOSCH

  49

  Bosch pulled to the curb just past the art museum on Grand. He unlocked the glove compartment and took out two things: a small six-shot pistol in a belt-clip holster and an old LAPD ID tag he was supposed to have turned in upon his retirement but claimed he had lost.

  He now clipped the gun to his belt and put the ID in his coat pocket. He put the Jeep’s flashers on and got out. Walking past the museum toward California Plaza, he saw Gustafson and Reyes standing at the open trunk of their unmarked car, getting out equipment they would need for their investigation. Bosch cut a path to them. Gustafson saw him coming.

  “What are you doing here, Bosch?” he said. “You’re not LAPD, you’re not wanted.”

  “You guys wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me,” Bosch said. “You would be—”

  “For the record, Bosch, I still think you are full of shit,” Gustafson said. “So you can go now. Bye-bye.”

  Gustafson slammed the trunk of the car to underline Bosch’s dismissal.

  “You’re not listening to me,” Bosch said. “This is no suicide and the hitter could still be in that building.”

  “Right. Orlando just told me all about your lady hitter. That’s a good one.”

  “Then why are you here, Gustafson? Since when does RHD roll on suicides?”

  “This guy takes a dive, his name comes up in our case, we get the call. A waste of my fucking time.”

  Gustafson walked by him and headed toward the scene in the plaza. Reyes dutifully followed and didn’t say a word to Bosch.

  Bosch watched them go and then surveyed the area. There was a crowd at the far end of the building, where Bosch could see men in security uniforms creating a perimeter around a blue canvas tarp that had been used to cover the body of Clayton Manley. The EMTs from the rescue ambulance were heading that way, and Gustafson and Reyes weren’t far behind them. Even from a distance Bosch could see that the blue tarp was just a fe
w feet from the building.

  There was nothing routine about suicides, but Bosch knew from his years on the job that jumpers usually propelled themselves away from the structure they dropped from. There were always the “step-offs,” but that method was not as precise or as final as the jump-off. Buildings often had architectural parapets, window-washing scaffolds, awnings, and other features that could interfere with a straight drop. The last thing a suicidal individual wanted was to have a fall broken and to bounce down the side of a building, possibly being left at the bottom alive.

  Bosch deviated from the path the others were taking and headed toward the building’s entrance. As he went, he surveyed California Plaza. It was surrounded on three sides by office towers. The one he was heading toward was the tallest but Bosch assumed that cameras somewhere in the plaza would have captured Manley’s fall. From them it might be possible to determine whether he had been conscious when he fell.

  He reached into his pocket as he approached the revolving glass doors at the lobby entrance, pulled out his old ID, and clipped it to the breast pocket of his jacket. He knew that the plan now was to keep moving and not stop long enough for anyone to read the date on it.

  Once he passed through the door, he saw the round security desk with a sign saying that visitors must show ID before being allowed to go up. Bosch strode toward it confidently. A man and a woman sat behind the counter, both wearing blue blazers with name tags.

  “Detective Bosch, LAPD,” he said. “Have any of my colleagues asked about visitors today to Michaelson & Mitchell on the sixteenth floor?”

  “Not yet,” the woman said. Her name tag said RACHEL.

  Bosch leaned over the counter as if to look down at the screen in front of Rachel. He put his elbow on the marble top and drew his hand up to his chin as if contemplating her answer. This allowed him to block her view of his ID tag with his forearm.

  “Can we take a look, then?” he said. “All visitors to the firm.”

  Rachel started typing. The angle Bosch had on her screen was too sharp and he could not see what she was doing.

  “I can only tell you who was put on the visitor list this morning,” Rachel said.

  “That’s fine,” Bosch said. “Would it say which lawyer in the firm they were visiting?”

  “Yes, I can provide that if needed.”

  “Thank you.”

  “This is about the suicide?”

  “We’re not calling it a suicide yet. We need to investigate it and that’s why we want to see who came up to the firm today.”

  Bosch turned and looked through the glass walls of the lobby. He did not have a view of the death scene but felt he was only a few moves ahead of Gustafson and Reyes. One of them would be going up to the firm soon.

  “Okay, I have it here,” Rachel said.

  “Is that something you can print out for me?” Bosch asked.

  “Not a problem.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rachel moved down the counter to a printer and took two pages out of the tray. She handed them to Bosch, who took them as he walked around the counter toward the elevators.

  “I’m going up to sixteen,” he said.

  “Wait,” Rachel said.

  Bosch froze.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You need a visitor card to get to the elevators,” Rachel said.

  Bosch had forgotten that the elevator lobby was protected by electronic turnstiles. Rachel programmed a card and handed it to him.

  “Here you go, Detective. Just put it into the slot at the turnstile.”

  “Thank you. How do I get access to the roof?”

  “You can get to thirty-two, but from there you have to take the maintenance stairwell up. It’s supposed to be locked but I guess today it wasn’t.”

  “How do employees get up to their offices?”

  “They enter the underground parking on Hill Street, take an elevator to this level, then everybody goes through the turnstiles. Employees get permanent cards.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “Be careful up there.”

  Bosch decided to go to the roof first. As he rode the elevator up, he tried to think in terms of how the Black Widow did it. She had somehow lured Manley to the roof and then pushed him off, or incapacitated him and pushed him off. The question was how she got him up there. Forcing him at gunpoint to walk through the law firm and take an elevator up would have been too risky. Just the chance that someone could be on the elevator would seem to scratch that as a possibility. But somehow, she had gotten Manley up there.

  As the elevator ascended, he looked for the first time at the printout he had received at the security desk. He knew, of course, that the Black Widow could have arrived as an employee or with an employee, but nevertheless he studied the names of the seventeen visitors on the list. None of them was Laurie Lee Wells. That would have been too easy. But only four were women, none were visiting Manley, and only one was visiting either Michaelson or Mitchell. That name was Sonja Soquin, who had arrived at 2:55 p.m. for a three o’clock appointment with Michaelson. Calculating from the time Reyes got the call while sitting with Bosch, he estimated that Manley had fallen from the building to his death sometime between 3:50 and 4:00 p.m.

  The elevator opened and Bosch stepped out. He looked up and down the hall and saw a uniformed officer standing in front of an open door Bosch assumed was the maintenance entrance to the roof. He walked that way.

  “Anybody gone up yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” the officer said. “It might be a crime scene.”

  As Bosch got closer he saw that the officer’s name tag said OHLMAN.

  “I’m going up,” Bosch said.

  The officer hesitated while eyeing Bosch’s ID tag. But Bosch turned as if to look back down the hallway.

  “This is the only way up?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Ohlman said. “The door was open when I got up here.”

  “Okay, let me take a look. My partner, Reyes, will be up soon. Tell him I’m up top.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ohlman stepped aside and Bosch entered a large maintenance room that had an iron staircase going up to the roof.

  Bosch took the stairs slowly, favoring his surgically repaired knee. It was at least thirty steps. When he got to the top he leaned against a steel railing to catch his breath for a moment and then pushed through a door.

  A murder of crows flew into the air as the metal door was taken by the wind and banged sharply against the wall. Bosch stepped out. The view was magnificent. To the west he could see the sun beginning to dip toward the Pacific, the orange ball reflecting on a blue-black surface at least twenty miles away.

  He walked toward the far edge, where the building curved and which he judged was the point Manley had dropped from. He walked slowly and scanned the ground, moving first across a helicopter pad and then an expanse of gravel on tar. An LAPD helicopter was circling above. Heavy wind buffeted his body, a reminder not to get too near the edge.

  Under his feet he could feel that the tar had softened in the direct sunlight of the day.

  The door slammed behind him and he whirled around, his hand going to his hip.

  There was no one.

  The wind.

  A two-foot-high parapet ran along the edge of the building. It had a metal endcap containing the lighting strip that outlined the edges of the building in blue at night. The mirrored tower looked generic by day but was a standout on the downtown skyline after sundown.

  Near the edge he saw a disturbance in the gravel—a three-foot-long deviation where gravel had been raked off the tar. He lowered himself, bracing his new knee with his hand as he dropped into a baseball catcher’s stance. He studied the marking and decided it could have been a drag mark or a slide mark that occurred during a struggle. But it appeared to have occurred recently: the tar had not been grayed by exposure to the sun and smog, as it had been in other places.

  A helicopter made a loud pass ove
rhead. Bosch did not look up. He studied what he was sure was a mark left by Clayton Manley before he went over the edge and down to the hard ground like a broken crow.

  50

  T here was another police officer standing guard in the reception area on the sixteenth floor. His name tag said FRENCH.

  “Any of my guys up here yet?” Bosch asked.

  “Not yet,” the officer said.

  “You’re keeping people from leaving?”

  “That’s right.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “We were code seven at the food court across the street. We got here pretty quick after the call. Maybe twenty-five minutes ago.”

  “We?”

  “My partner’s upstairs. The firm has elevators on the second level too.”

  “Okay, I need to go back to the victim’s office.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bosch walked past the suede couch and started around the staircase but then thought of something and returned to the officer.

  “Officer French, did anybody try to leave while you’ve been here?”

  “Just a couple people, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “I didn’t get names. I wasn’t told to do that.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Two guys, they said they had to go to court. I told them we’d get them cleared as soon as possible. They said they’d call the courtroom to notify them.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Bosch headed around the stairway again. He was convinced that the Black Widow had come and gone. He moved quietly down the hall. The door to Michaelson’s office was closed but the door to Mitchell’s office was open, and as Bosch passed he saw an older man with graying hair standing at the floor-to-ceiling window looking down into the plaza.

  The door to Clayton Manley’s office was closed as well. Bosch leaned his ear against it and listened for conversation but heard nothing. He pulled his jacket sleeve over his palm and pushed the handle down to open the door.