Bosch nodded. It was a good point. But it didn't make him feel any better about Danny Kotchof.
"Another thing is what he wrote in that letter," he said. "He said he was sorry that it had to happen. Had to happen-what does that mean?"
"It's just a figure of speech, Harry. You can't build a case on it."
"I'm not talking about building a case on it. I just wonder why he chose to say it that way."
"If he's still alive, we'll find him and you'll get to ask him."
They had crossed under the 405 and were in Panorama City. Bosch dropped the discussion of Danny Kotchof and Rider brought up Muriel Verloren.
"She's frozen solid," Rider said.
"Yeah."
"It's pitiful. There was no reason for them to take the daughter up the hill. They might as well have killed everybody in the house. They did anyway."
Bosch thought that was a harsh way of looking at it but didn't say anything.
"Them?" he asked instead.
"What?"
"You said there was no reason for them to take the daughter up the hill. You sound like Bailey Sable."
"I don't know. Looking at that hill. It would have been tough for one person. It's steep back there."
"Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Two people."
"Your idea about spooking Mackey is getting better. If he was there, he could lead us to the other-whether it's Kotchof or somebody else."
Bosch turned south on Van Nuys Boulevard and stopped in front of an aging apartment complex that covered half the block. It was called the Panorama View Suites. There was a sign that said RENTAL OFFICE to the left of the glass doors of the lobby. It also announced that units were available on a monthly and weekly basis. Bosch put the transmission into park.
"Besides Kotchof, what else were you thinking, Harry?"
"I was thinking that I want to track down and talk to the other two friends. Maybe you can take the lesbian. But the father is my priority-if we can find him."
"Okay, you take the father and I'll take the lesbian. Maybe I'll get to go up to San Francisco."
"It's Hayward. And if you need help I know an inspector up there who will track her down and save L.A. the cost of the trip."
"You are really no fun, Harry. I'd like to hang out with the northern sisters."
"Did the chief know about you?"
"Not at first. When he found out he didn't care."
Bosch nodded. He liked the chief for that.
"What else?" Rider asked.
"Sam Weiss."
"Who is that?"
"The burglary victim. The one whose gun was used to kill the girl."
"Why him?"
"They didn't have Roland Mackey back then. Might be worth running the name by him."
"Check."
"After that I think we'll be ready to make the play with Mackey, see how he reacts."
"Then let's get this over with and then go talk to Pratt."
They cracked the doors at the same time and got out. As Bosch came around the SUV he could feel her looking at him, studying him.
"What?" he asked.
"There's something else."
"What do you mean?"
"With you. When you get that little crease on your left eyebrow I know something's going on."
"My ex-wife always told me I'd make a bad poker player. Too many tells."
"Well, what is it?"
"I don't know yet. Something about that room."
"Back at the house? Her bedroom? You mean like it was creepy her keeping it like that?"
"No, actually, her keeping it was okay with me. I think I get that. It's something else. Something wrong, something different. I'll grind it out and let you know when I know."
"Okay, Harry, that's what you're good at."
They went through the glass doors into the Panorama View Suites. In ten minutes they confirmed what they knew going in; that Mackey had moved out soon after he had completed his probation.
As expected, he'd left no forwarding address.
14
ABEL PRATT WAS BEHIND his desk eating a concoction of yogurt and cornflakes out of a plastic tub. He made both a sucking and crackling sound as he ate and it was getting on Bosch's nerves. They had been sitting with him for twenty minutes, updating him on the day's progress on the cold hit.
"Shit, I'm still hungry," he said after finishing the last spoonful.
"What is that, the South Beach diet?" Rider asked.
"No, just my own thing. What I need, though, is the South Bureau diet."
"Really? And what is the South Bureau diet?"
Bosch could feel Rider tense. The South Bureau encompassed the majority of the city's black community. She had to wonder if what Pratt had just said was some sort of backhanded racial comment. Bosch had often seen in the department the elevation of the us versus them ethic to the point that white cops would make racially tinged comments in front of black or Latino cops simply because they believed that within the rank and file, the color blue superseded skin color. Rider was about to find out if Pratt was one of these cops.
"Put down your antenna," Pratt said. "All I'm saying is that I worked in South for ten years and I never had to worry about my weight. You're always on the run down there. Then I got to RHD and gained fifteen pounds in two years. It's sad."
Rider relaxed and so did Bosch.
"Get off your ass and knock on doors," Bosch said. "That was the rule in Hollywood."
"Good rule," Pratt said. "Except it's hard when they put you in charge. I have to sit in here and hear about how you guys get to knock on doors."
"But you get the big bucks," Rider said.
"Oh, yeah."
This was a joke because as a supervisor Pratt could not pull overtime. But those on his squad could, thereby setting up the possibility that some of his detectives would make more than him, even though he was the unit boss.
Pratt turned in his chair and opened a cooler on the floor beside him. He took out another tub of yogurt.
"Fuck it," he said as he straightened up and opened it.
He didn't add cornflakes this time. Bosch only had to put up with the slurping as he started spooning the white gunk into his mouth.
"Okay, back to this," Pratt said, his mouth full of it. "What you are telling me is that at the end of the day you can tie the gun to this mope Mackey. He fired this weapon. But you've got nobody who ties him to the victim yet and therefore you cannot tie him to the fatal shot."
"That and other things," Rider said.
"So if I was a defense lawyer," Pratt continued, "I would have Mackey cop to the burglary because the statute of limitations has long expired. He would say the gun bit him when he tried it out so he got rid of the damn thing-long before any murder. He'd say, 'No sir I didn't kill that little girl with it and you can't prove I did. You can't prove I ever laid eyes on her.'"
Rider and Bosch nodded.
"So you got nothing."
They nodded again.
"Not bad for a day's work. What do you want to do about it?"
"We want a wiretap," Bosch said. "Two, maybe three locations. One on his cell, one on the phone at the gas station. And then one on his home once we find it and if he's got a line there. We plant a story in the paper that says we're working the case again and make sure he sees it. Then we see if he talks about it with anybody."
"And what makes you think he would talk to someone else about a murder he may or may not have committed seventeen years ago?"
"Because, like we said, so far we can't connect this guy to the girl in any way. So we're thinking there is somebody in the middle in this thing. Mackey either did this for somebody or he got the gun for that somebody to do it himself."
"There is a third possibility," Rider added. "That he helped. That girl was carried up a steep hillside. It was either somebody big or somebody with help."
Pratt took two spoonfuls of yogurt, frowning as he looked down into the tub, before responding.
"We think so," Rider said. "We're going to use Commander Garcia of Valley Bureau. He was on the case originally. Haunted by the one that got away, that sort of pitch. He says he's got a connection at the Daily News."
"Okay, sounds like a plan. Write up the warrants and give them to me. The captain has to approve them and then they go to the DA's office for approval before going to the judge. It's going to take some time. Once we get a judge to okay it we'll take the other teams off what they're doing and put them on the wire while you watch our guy."
Bosch and Rider stood up at the same time. Bosch felt a little charge of adrenaline drop into his blood.
"There's no chance this guy Mackey is into something right now, is there?" Pratt asked.
"What do you mean?" Bosch asked.
"It's just that if we could make a case that he was about to commit a crime we could probably expedite the warrants."
Bosch thought about this.
"We don't have that now," he said. "But we could work on it."
"Good. That would help."
15
RIDER WAS THE WRITER. She had an ease with the computer as well as the language of law. Bosch had seen her put these skills to use on several previous investigations. So their decision was unspoken. She would write the warrants seeking court authorization to trace and listen to calls made by or to Roland Mackey on his cell phone, the office phone at the service station where he worked, and his home if an additional phone existed there. It would be painstaking work; she had to lay out the case against Mackey, making sure the chain of logic and probable cause had no weak links. Her paper case had to first convince Pratt, then Captain Norona, then a deputy district attorney charged with making sure local law enforcement did not run roughshod over civil liberties, and finally a judge who had the same responsibilities but also answered to the electorate should he make a mistake that blew up in his face. They had one shot at this and they had to do it right. Rather, Rider had to do it right.
But all of that came after the initial hurdle of getting Mackey's various phone numbers without tipping the suspect to the investigation taking form around him.
They started with Tampa Towing, which ran a half-page ad in the yellow pages that carried two 24-hour phone numbers. Next, a call to directory assistance established that Mackey had no hardwired phone listing private or otherwise in his name. It meant he either had no phone at his home or he was living in a place where the phone was registered to someone else. That could be dealt with later once they established Mackey's residence.
Last and most difficult was Mackey's cell phone number. Directory assistance did not carry cell listings. To check every cellular service provider for a listing could take days if not weeks because most required a court-ordered search warrant before revealing a customer's private number. Instead, law enforcement investigators routinely planned ruses in order to get the numbers they needed. This often entailed leaving innocuous messages at workplaces so that the cell phone number could be captured upon callback. The most popular of these was the standard call-back-for-your-prize message, promising a television or DVD player to the first one hundred people who returned the call. However, this involved setting up a non-police line and could also result in long waiting periods with no guarantee of success if the target had masked his or her cell number. Rider and Bosch did not feel they had the luxury of time. They had put Mackey's name out into the public. They had to move quickly toward their goal.
"Don't worry," Bosch told Rider. "I've got a plan."
"Then I'll just sit back and watch the master."
Since he knew Mackey was on duty at the service station Bosch simply called the station and said he needed a tow. He was told to hold on and then a voice he believed belonged to Roland Mackey came onto the line.
"You need a tow?"
"Either a tow or a jump. I can't get it started."
"Where?"
"The Albertson's parking lot on Topanga near Devonshire."
"We're all the way over on Tampa. You can get somebody closer."
"I know but I live by you guys. Right off Roscoe and behind the hospital."
"Okay, then. What are you driving?"
Bosch thought of the car they had seen Mackey in earlier. He decided to use it to pull Mackey off the fence.
"'Seventy-two Camaro."
"Restored?"
"I'm working on it."
"It should be about fifteen minutes before I'm there."
"Okay, great. What's your name?"
"Ro."
"Ro? Like row a boat?"
"Like in Roland, man. I'm on my way."
He hung up. Bosch and Rider waited five minutes, during which Bosch told her the rest of the plan and what part she would play in it. Her goal was to get two things: Mackey's cell number and his service provider so that a search warrant authorizing the wiretap could be delivered to the proper company.
Following Bosch's instructions, Rider called the Chevron station and started making a service appointment, going into great detail in describing the screeching her car's brakes made. While she was in the middle of it, Bosch called the station on the second line listed in the phone book. As expected Rider was put on hold. Bosch's call was answered and he said, "Do you have a number I can reach Ro on? He's coming here to give me a jump and I got it started already."
Mackey's harried co-worker said, "Try him on his cell."
He gave Bosch the number and Bosch flashed the thumbs-up across the desk to Rider. She finished her call without breaking the act and hung up.
"One down, one to go," Bosch said.
"You got the easy one," Rider said.
With Mackey's number in hand, Rider took over while Bosch listened on an extension. Putting a disinterested bureaucratic glaze over her voice she called the number and when Mackey answered-presumably while looking for a stalled '72 Camaro in a shopping center parking lot-she announced that she was his AT&T Wireless provider and that she had some exciting news for savings over his current long-distance minutes plan.
"Bullshit," Mackey said, interrupting her in the middle of her spiel.
"Excuse me, sir?" Rider replied.
"I said bullshit. This is some sort of scam to make me switch."
"I don't understand, sir. I have you listed as an AT&T Wireless customer. Is that not the case?"
"Yeah, that's not the fucking case. I'm with Sprint and I like it and I don't even have or want long-distance service. So fuck off. Can you hear me now?"
He hung up and Rider started laughing.
"This is an angry guy we're dealing with," she said.
"Well, he just drove all the way across Chatsworth for nothing," Bosch said. "I'd be angry too."
"He's with Sprint," she said. "I'm ready to rock and roll on the paper. But maybe you should call him, so he won't be suspicious about you not calling when the guy in the shop tells him he gave out his number."
Bosch nodded and called Mackey's number. Thankfully it went to a message; Mackey was probably on the phone angrily telling the guy in the shop he could not find the car he was supposed to tow. Bosch left a message saying he was sorry but he was able to get his car started and was trying to get it home. He closed his phone and looked at Rider.
They talked some more about scheduling and decided that she would work exclusively on the warrant that night and the next day and then babysit it through the approval stages. She said she wanted Bosch with her when it got to the final approval. Having both members of the team in the judge's chambers would help cement the deal. Until then, Bosch would continue to work the field, tracking the remaining names on their list of people to be interviewed and putting the newspaper story in motion. Timing was going to be the issue. They didn't want a story about the case in the newspaper until they had taps in place on the phones Mackey used. Finessing all of this would be the key maneuver.
"I'm going home, Harry," Rider said. "I can
get this started on my laptop."
"Have a good one."
"What will you do?"
"I've got a few things I want to get done tonight. Maybe go down to the Toy District, I think."
"By yourself?"
The Closers Page 12