Bosch reviewed his actions on the freeway before answering.
"It was pretty quick," he finally said. "Ten minutes max."
"Then there you go," Marcia said. "Getting from the one eighteen in Porter Ranch all the way to Mariano Street in Woodland Hills in ten minutes max? And without being seen by our guys? No way. It wasn't him. Kehoe and Bradshaw are his alibi."
"And no cell phone in the house . . ."
They all already knew that the landline in the house was not used to make a call because it would have registered on the monitoring equipment at ListenTech.
"Nope," Marcia said. "No cell phone and no call on the landline. I don't think this is our guy."
Bosch wasn't ready to agree yet. He thanked him and hung up, then gave the bad news to Rider.
"So what do we do with him?" she asked.
"Well, he might not be our guy on Mackey, but Mackey called him after the story was read to him. I still like him for Verloren."
"But that doesn't make sense. Whoever hit Mackey had to have been his partner on Verloren-unless you're saying what happened on the on-ramp is just coincidental to all of this."
Bosch shook his head.
"No, I'm not saying that. We're just missing something. Burkhart had to have gotten a message out of that house."
"You mean like dial-a-hitman or something? It's not working for me, Harry."
Now Bosch nodded. He knew she was right. It wasn't coming together.
"All right, then let's just go in there and see what he has to say for himself."
Rider agreed and they spent a few minutes working out an interview strategy before going back into the hallway behind the squad room and entering the interview room where Burkhart waited.
The room was stuffy with Burkhart's body odor and Bosch left the door open. Burkhart had his head down on his folded arms. When he didn't rouse from his feigned sleep Bosch kicked the leg of his chair and that brought his head up.
"Rise and shine, Billy Blitzkrieg," Bosch said.
Burkhart had scraggly dark hair that flopped around a face of pasty white skin. He looked like he didn't go out much except at night.
"I want a lawyer," Burkhart said.
"We all do. But let's start with first things first. My name is Bosch and this is Rider. You are William Burkhart and you are under arrest for suspicion of murder."
Rider started to read him his rights but he cut her off.
"Are you crazy? I never left my house. My girlfriend was there the whole time."
Bosch held a finger to his lips.
"Let her finish, Billy, and then you can lie to us as much as you like."
Rider finished reading the rights off the back of one of her business cards. Then Bosch took back over.
"Now, you were saying?"
"I'm saying you are fucked. I was home the whole time and I have a witness who can prove it. Besides, Ro was my friend. Why would I kill him? This is just a fucking joke, so why don't you go ahead and get me my lawyer now so he can laugh your asses out of here."
"You finished, Bill? 'Cause I have some news for you. We're not talking about Roland Mackey. We're taking you back seventeen years to Rebecca Verloren. You remember her? You and Mackey? The girl you took up into the hills? That's who we're talking about here."
Burkhart showed nothing. Bosch had been hoping for a tell, some sort of sign that he was on the right track.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Burkhart said, his face a stone.
"We've got you on tape. Mackey called last night. It's over, Burkhart. Seventeen years is a long run, but it's over."
"You got shit. If there is a tape then all you'll hear is me tellin' him to shut up. I don't have a cell phone and I don't trust 'em. That's standing operating procedure. If he was going to start telling me his problems I didn't want to do it on a goddamn cell phone. As far as Rebecca whatever-her-name-is, I don't know nothing about that. I guess you should've asked Ro while you had the chance."
He looked at Bosch and winked and Bosch felt like coming across the table at him. But he didn't.
They verbally sparred for another twenty minutes but neither Bosch nor Rider put a ding in Burkhart's armor. Eventually Burkhart stopped taking part in the back-and-forth, saying once more that he wanted an attorney and not responding in any form to any question that followed.
Rider and Bosch left the room to discuss their options, which they agreed were minimal. They had thrown a bluff at Burkhart. He had called them on it and they either had to book him and get him his lawyer or kick him loose.
"We don't have it, Harry," Rider said. "We shouldn't kid ourselves. I say we kick him."
Bosch nodded. He knew it was true. They didn't have a case now, and for that matter they might never have one. Mackey, the one direct connection to Verloren they had, was gone. Bosch's own doing had lost him. Now they would have to go back in time and run a full field on Burkhart and search for something that was missed or hidden or ignored seventeen years before. The full depression of their case situation was descending on him like a lead blanket.
He opened his phone and called Marcia once more.
"Anything?"
"Nothing, Harry. No phone, no evidence, nothing."
"Okay. Just so you know, we're going to kick him. He might show up there in a little while."
"Great. He won't like what he finds here."
"Good."
Bosch closed the phone and looked at Rider. Her eyes told the story. Disaster. He knew he had let her down. For the first time he thought maybe Irving had been right-maybe he shouldn't have come back.
"I'll go tell him he's a free man," he said.
After he walked away Rider called after him.
"Harry, I don't blame you."
He looked back at her.
"I went along every step of the way. It was a good plan."
He nodded.
"Thanks, Kiz."
35
BOSCH WENT HOME to take a shower, get fresh clothes and maybe close his eyes for a while before heading back downtown for the unit meeting. Once again he drove through a city that was just waking for the day. And once more it came up ugly in his eyes, all sharp edges and harsh glare. Everything seemed ugly to him now.
Bosch didn't look forward to the unit meeting. He knew all eyes would be on him. Everybody in Open-Unsolved understood that their actions would now be analyzed and second-guessed following Mackey's death. They also understood that if they were looking for a reason for the potential threat to their careers, they didn't have to look far.
Bosch threw his keys on the kitchen counter and checked the phone. No messages. He looked at his watch and determined that he had at least a couple hours before he needed to head toward the Pacific Dining Car. Checking the time reminded him of the ultimatum he had given Irving during their confrontation in the hallway outside RHD. But Bosch doubted he would hear from Irving or McClellan now. It seemed as though everybody was calling his bluffs.
He knew sleeping for a couple hours wasn't really an option, not with everything that weighed on him. He had carried the murder book and the accumulated files into the house. He decided he would work on them. He knew that when all else went wrong there was always the murder book. He had to keep his eyes on the prize. The case.
He started the coffee brewer, took a five-minute shower and then went to work rereading the murder book while a remastered release of Kind of Blue sounded from the CD player.
The feeling that he was missing something right in front of him was grinding on him. He felt that he would be haunted by the case, that he would carry it around with him forever, unless he cracked through and found that missing thing. And he knew that if it was to be found anywhere, it would be in the book.
He decided that this time he would not read through the documents in the order they had been presented to him by the first investigators of the case. He snapped open the rings and took the documents out. He started reading them in random order, taking his time,
making sure that he absorbed every name, every word, every photo.
Fifteen minutes later he was staring once again at the crime scene photos of Rebecca Verloren's bedroom when he heard a car door close in front of his house. Curious about who would be parking out there so early he got up and went to the door. Through the peephole he saw a man approaching by himself. It was hard to clearly see him through the convex lens of the peep. Bosch opened the door anyway, before the man had a chance to knock.
It did not surprise the man that his approach had been watched. Bosch could tell by his demeanor that he was a cop.
"McClellan?"
He nodded.
"Lieutenant McClellan. And I assume you are Detective Bosch."
"You could have called."
Bosch stepped back to let him in. Neither man offered to shake hands. Bosch thought it was typical of Irving to send his man to the house. A standard procedure in the old I-know-where-you-live intimidation strategy.
"I thought it better that we talk face to face," McClellan said.
"You thought? Or Chief Irving thought?"
McClellan was a big man with sandy, almost transparent hair and wide, florid cheeks. Bosch thought he could best be described as well fed. His cheeks turned a darker shade at Bosch's question.
"Look, I'm here to cooperate with you, Detective."
"Good. Can I get you something? I have water."
"Water'd be fine."
"Have a seat."
Bosch went into the kitchen and chose the dustiest glass from the cabinet and then filled it with tap water. He flicked off the switch on the coffeemaker and warmer. He wasn't going to let McClellan get cozy.
When he returned to the living room McClellan was looking out through the sliding glass door and across the deck. The air was clear in the pass. But it was still early.
"Nice view," McClellan said.
"I know. I don't see any files in your hand, Lieutenant. I hope this isn't a social call or like one of those visits you made to Robert Verloren seventeen years ago."
McClellan turned to Bosch and accepted the glass of water and the insult with the same blank expression.
"There are no files. If there were, they disappeared a long time ago."
"And what? You're here to try to convince me with your memories?"
"As a matter of fact, I have great recall of that time period. You have to understand something. I was a detective first grade assigned to the PDU. If I was given a job, I did it. You don't question command in that situation. You do and you're out."
"So you were a good soldier just doing your job. I get it. What about the Chatsworth Eights and the Verloren murder? What about the alibis?"
"There were eight principal players in the Eights. I cleared them all. And don't think I wanted to clear them and so I just did. I was told to see if any of these little pissants could have been involved. And I checked it out, but they all came up clean-on the murder at least."
"Tell me about William Burkhart and Roland Mackey."
McClellan sat down on a chair by the television. He put his glass of water, which he had yet to drink from, down on the coffee table. Bosch turned off Miles Davis in the middle of "Freddie Freeloader" and stood with his hands in his pockets near the sliding doors.
"Well, first of all, Burkhart was easy. We were already watching him that night."
"Explain that."
"He had just gotten out of Wayside a few days before. We had gotten tipped that while he was up there he was re-upping on the racial religion, so it was thought to be prudent to keep an eye on him to see if he was going to try to start things up again."
"Who ordered that?"
McClellan just looked at him.
"Irving, of course," Bosch answered. "Keeping the deal safe. So PDU was watching Burkhart. Who else?"
"Burkhart got out and hooked up with two guys from the old group. A guy named Withers and another named Simmons. It looked like they might've been planning something, but on the night in question they were in a pool hall on Tampa drinking themselves into oblivion. It was solid. Two undercovers were in there with them the whole time. That's what I'm here to tell you. They were all solid, Detective."
"Yeah? Well, tell me about Mackey. The PDU wasn't watching him, was it?"
"No, not Mackey."
"Then how was he so solid?"
"What I remember about Mackey was that on the night the girl was taken he was getting tutored at Chatsworth High. He was going to night school, getting his high school degree."
"Actually, his general education degree. Not exactly the same thing."
"That's right. A judge had ordered it as a condition of probation. Only he had to pass and he wasn't doing too good. But he was getting tutored on the off nights-when there was no school. And the night the girl got grabbed, he was with his tutor. I confirmed it."
Bosch shook his head. McClellan was trying to feed him a line.
"You're telling me Mackey was getting tutored through the middle of the night? Either you're full of shit or you believed a line of bullshit from Mackey and his tutor. Who was the tutor?"
"No, no, they were together earlier in the evening. I don't remember the guy's name now, but they were done by like eleven at the latest and then they went their separate ways. Mackey went home."
Bosch looked astonished.
"That's no alibi, Lieutenant! Time of death on the girl was two in the a.m. Didn't you know that?"
"Of course I did. But time of death wasn't the only alibi point. I was given the summaries put together by the guys on the case. There was no forced entry to that house. And the father had gone around and checked all the doors and locks after he got home at ten that night. That meant the killer had to have been inside the house at that point. He was in there hiding, waiting for everybody to go to sleep."
Bosch sat down on the couch and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He suddenly realized that McClellan was right and that everything was now different. He had seen the same report McClellan had seen seventeen years before but its meaning had not registered. The killer had been inside by the time Robert Verloren came home from work.
This changed a lot, Bosch knew. It changed how he looked not only at the first investigation, but also at his own.
Not registering Bosch's inner turmoil, McClellan continued.
"So Mackey couldn't have gotten into that house because he was with his tutor. He checked out. All those little assholes checked out. So I gave my boss a verbal report and then he told the two guys working the case. And that was the end of it until this DNA thing came up."
Bosch was nodding to what McClellan was saying but he was thinking about other things.
"If Mackey was clean, how do you explain his DNA on the murder weapon?" he asked.
McClellan looked dumbfounded. He shook his head.
"I don't know what to say. I can't explain it. I cleared him of involvement in the actual murder, but he must've . . ."
He didn't finish. Bosch thought that he actually looked wounded by the idea that he might have helped a murderer or at least the person who provided the weapon for a murder to get away with it. He looked as though he knew all at once that he had been corrupted by Irving. He looked crushed.
"Is Irving still planning to tip the media and IAD to all of this?" Bosch asked quietly.
McClellan slowly shook his head.
"No," he said. "He told me to give you a message. He said to tell you an agreement is only an agreement if both sides keep their end of it. That's it."
"One last question," Bosch said. "The evidence box on the Verloren case is gone. You know anything about that?"
McClellan stared at him. Bosch could tell he had badly insulted the man.
"I had to ask," Bosch said.
"All I know is that stuff disappears from the place," McClellan said through a tight jaw. "Anybody could have walked off with it in seventeen years. But it wasn't me."
Bosch nodded. He stood up.
"Well, I ha
ve to get back to work on this," he said.
McClellan took the cue and stood. He seemed to swallow his anger over the last question, maybe accepting Bosch's explanation that it had to be asked.
"All right, Detective," he said. "Good luck with this thing. I hope you catch the guy. And I really mean that."
He held his hand out to Bosch. Bosch didn't know McClellan's story. He didn't know all the circumstances of life in the PDU in 1988. But it looked like McClellan was leaving the house with a greater burden than he had come in with. So Bosch decided he could shake his hand.
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