The Closers

by Michael Connelly

  When they got to the school it was lunchtime. As they walked down the main hallway to the office they could hear the near-riotous collision of voices from the cafeteria.

  Mrs. Atkins was behind the counter in the office. She looked a little confused when she saw Amanda Sobek in the company of the detectives. Bosch asked to see Principal Stoddard.

  "Mr. Stoddard took lunch off-campus today," Mrs. Atkins said. "Is there something I can help with?"

  "Yes, we'd like to see Kaitlyn Sobek. Mrs. Sobek here will be with us when we talk to her."

  "Right now?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Atkins, right now. I would appreciate it if you or another school employee could go and get her. It might be better if the other kids didn't see her being accompanied by the police."

  "I could go get her," Amanda offered.

  "No," Bosch said quickly. "We want to see her at the same time as you."

  It was a polite way of saying that he didn't want her to ask her daughter about the cell phone before the police did.

  "I'll just go to the cafeteria and find her," Mrs. Atkins said. "You can use the principal's meeting room for your . . . uh, talk."

  She came around the counter, averted her eyes from Amanda Sobek and headed toward the door that led to the main hallway.

  "Thank you, Mrs. Atkins," Bosch said.

  It took Mrs. Atkins almost five minutes to locate and return with Kaitlyn Sobek. While they were waiting, Melody Lane arrived and Bosch told Amanda that her assistant would have to wait outside the interview. The girl accompanied Bosch, Rider and her mother into a room off the principal's office that had a round table with six chairs around it.

  After everyone sat down, Bosch nodded to Rider and she took over. Bosch thought it would be best for a woman to lead the interview of the girl and Rider understood this without discussion. She explained to Kaitlyn that they were investigating a phone call that was made on her cell phone at 1:40 p.m. the day before. The girl immediately interrupted.

  "That's impossible," she said.

  "Why is that?" Rider asked. "We had an electronic trap on the line that was called. It showed the call came from your phone."

  "I was in school yesterday. We're not allowed to use cell phones during school hours."

  The girl appeared nervous. Bosch could tell she was lying but couldn't figure out what the play was. He wondered if she was lying because her mother was in the room.

  "Where is your phone right now?" Rider asked.

  "In my backpack in my locker. And it's turned off."

  "Is that where it was yesterday at one-forty?"

  "Uh-huh."

  She looked away from Rider as she lied. She was easy to read and Bosch knew Rider was getting the same thing he was getting.

  "Kaitlyn, this is a very serious investigation," Rider said in a soothing tone. "If you are lying to us you could find yourself in a lot of trouble."

  "Kaitlyn, don't lie!" Amanda Sobek said forcefully.

  "Mrs. Sobek, let's stay calm about this," Rider said. "Kaitlyn, these electronic traps I was telling you about are called pen registers. The registers don't lie. Your cell phone was used to make the call. There is no doubt. So is it possible someone got into your locker and used your phone yesterday?"

  She shrugged.

  "Anything's possible, I guess."

  "Okay, who would have done that?"

  "I don't know. You were the one who said it."

  Bosch cleared his throat, which drew the girl's eyes to his. He stared hard at her and said, "I think maybe we should take a drive downtown. Maybe this is not the right place for an interview."

  He started to push back his chair and get up.

  "Kaitlyn, what is going on here?" Amanda pleaded. "These people are serious. Who did you call?"

  "No one, okay?"

  "No, it's not okay."

  "I didn't have the phone, all right? It was confiscated."

  Bosch sat back down and Rider took over again.

  "Who confiscated your phone?" she asked.

  "Mrs. Sable," the girl said.

  "Why?"

  "Because we're not supposed to use them inside school once the homeroom bell rings. Yesterday my best friend Rita didn't come to school. So I tried to text message her during homeroom to see if she was all right and Mrs. Sable caught me."

  "And she took your phone?"

  "Yes, she took it."

  Bosch's mind was racing, trying to put Bailey Koster Sable into the mold of murderer of Rebecca Verloren. He knew one thing didn't work. A sixteen-year-old Bailey Koster could not have carried her friend's limp body up the hill behind her house.

  "Why did you just lie to us about this?" Rider asked Kaitlyn.

  "Because I didn't want her to know I was in trouble," the girl said, indicating her mother with her chin.

  "Kaitlyn, you never lie to the police," Amanda shot back. "I don't care what -"

  "Mrs. Sobek, you can talk to her about this later," Bosch said. "Let us continue."

  "When did you get the phone back, Kaitlyn?" Rider asked.

  "At the end of the day."

  "So Mrs. Sable had your phone all day?"

  "Yes. I mean, no. Not all day."

  "Well, who had it?"

  "I don't know. When they take your phone they tell you that you have to pick it up at the end of the day at the principal's office. That's what I did. Mr. Stoddard gave it back to me."

  Gordon Stoddard. Things all at once started to come together. Bosch had tucked into the water tunnel and the case and all its details were swirling around him. He rode the wave of clarity and grace. Everything was clicking. Stoddard clicked. Mackey's last word clicked. Stoddard was Rebecca's teacher. He was close to her. He was her lover and the late night caller. It all clicked into place.

  Mr. X.

  Bosch stood up and left the room without a word. He walked past Stoddard's office door. It was open and the desk was empty. He went out to the front counter.

  "Mrs. Atkins, where is Mr. Stoddard?"

  "He was just here but then he stepped out."

  "To where?"

  "I don't know. Maybe the cafeteria. I told him you and the other detective were here talking to Kaitlyn."

  "And then he left?"

  "Yes. Oh, I just realized-he might be in the parking lot. He said he got a new car today. Maybe he's showing it to one of the teachers."

  "What kind of car? Did he say?"

  "A Lexus. He said it had a model number but I forget which one."

  "Does he have an assigned parking space?"

  "Uh, yes, it is in the first row on the right as you come out of the entrance hall."

  Bosch turned from her and went out the door to the hallway. It was crowded with students leaving the cafeteria to start afternoon classes. Bosch started moving through the crowd, dodging students and picking up speed. Soon he was free of them and running. He came into the parking lot and immediately trotted down the parking lane to the right. He found an empty space with Stoddard's name painted on the curb.

  He turned to go back in to get Rider. He was pulling his phone off his belt when he saw a silver blur to his right. It was a car coming right at him and it was too late to get out of the way.

  39

  BOSCH WAS HELPED UP into a sitting position on the asphalt.

  "Harry, are you all right?"

  He focused and saw that it was Rider. He nodded shakily. He tried to remember what had just happened.

  "It was Stoddard," he said. "He was coming right at me."

  "In his car?"

  Bosch laughed. He had left that part out.

  "Yeah, his new car. A silver Lexus."

  Bosch started to get up. Rider put a hand on his shoulder to hold him down.

  "Just wait a minute. Are you sure you're all right? Does anything hurt?"

  "Just my head."

  It was coming back to him now.

  "I banged it when I landed," he said. "I jumped out of the way. I saw his eyes, you know? The rag
e, I mean."

  "Let me see your eyes."

  He looked up at her and she held his chin while she checked his pupils.

  "You look all right," she said.

  "Okay, then, I'll sit here for a second while you go back in and get Stoddard's home address from Mrs. Atkins."

  Rider nodded.

  "All right. You wait here."

  "Hurry. We have to find him."

  She ran back into the school. Bosch reached up and felt the bump on the back of his head. He replayed the clearing memory. He had seen Stoddard's face behind the windshield. It was angry, contorted.

  But then he had yanked the wheel to the left as Bosch jumped the other way.

  Bosch reached for his phone so he could call in a wanted bulletin for Stoddard. It wasn't on his belt. He looked around and saw the phone on the asphalt near the rear tire of a BMW. He crawled over and grabbed it, then stood up.

  Bosch was hit with mild vertigo and had to lean on the car. Suddenly an electronic voice said, "Please step away from the car!"

  Bosch pulled his hand away and started walking toward the part of the lot where he had parked his own car. On the way he called central dispatch and put out the wanted bulletin for Stoddard and his silver Lexus.

  Bosch closed the phone and hooked it on his belt. He got to his car, started it and pulled up to the entrance so they would be ready to go as soon as Rider came out with the address.

  After what seemed like an interminable wait Rider finally emerged and trotted to the car. But she came to his side, opened his door and waved him out.

  "It's not far," she announced. "It's a house on Chase off of Winnetka. But you're not driving. I am."

  Bosch knew that arguing would waste time. He got out and moved as quickly as his balance allowed around the front of the car and got in on the passenger side. Rider hit the gas and they moved out of the parking lot.

  As Rider made her way on surface streets toward Stoddard's home Bosch called for backup from Devonshire Division patrol and then called Abel Pratt to quickly fill him in on the morning's revelations.

  "Where do you think he's going?" Pratt asked.

  "No idea. We're on the way to his house."

  "Is he suicidal?"

  "No idea."

  Pratt was silent for a moment as he digested this. He then asked a few more questions about minor details and hung up.

  "He sounded happy," Bosch told Rider. "Says if we get this guy it'll help turn a lemon into lemonade."

  "Good," Rider replied. "We can pull prints from Stoddard's office or home and match them to the print from underneath the bed. Then it's a done deal whether he's in the wind or not."

  "Don't worry, we'll get him."

  "Harry, what are you thinking, Stoddard and Mackey did this together?"

  "I don't know. But I remember that photo of Stoddard from the yearbook. He looked pretty lean. He might have been able to carry her up the hill by himself. We'll never know unless we find him and ask him."

  Rider nodded.

  "The key question," she then said, "is how Stoddard connected with Mackey."

  "The gun."

  "I know that. That's obvious. I mean, how did he know Mackey back then? Where is the intersection and how did he know him well enough to get the gun from him?"

  "I think it was right there in front of us all along," Bosch said. "And Mackey told me with his last word."

  "Chatsworth?"

  "Chatsworth High."

  "How do you mean?"

  "That summer he was getting his GED at Chatsworth High. On the night of the murder Mackey's alibi was his tutor. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe Mackey was the tutor's alibi."

  "Stoddard?"

  "He told us that first day that all of the teachers at Hillside had outside jobs. Maybe Stoddard was working as a tutor. Maybe he was Mackey's tutor."

  "That's a lot of maybes, Harry."

  "That's why we've got to find Stoddard before he does anything to himself."

  "You think he's suicidal? You told Abel you didn't know."

  "I don't know anything for sure. But back in that parking lot he turned away from me at the last second. It makes me think that he only wants to hurt one person."

  "Himself? Maybe he just didn't want to dent his new car."

  "Maybe."

  Rider turned onto Winnetka, a four-lane street, and started moving faster. They were almost to Stoddard's home. Bosch rode silently, thinking about what might be waiting for them ahead. Rider finally turned west on Chase and there was a black-and-white patrol car with both of its front doors open in the street up ahead. Rider pulled to a quick stop behind it and they jumped out of the car. Bosch took his gun off his belt and carried it at his side. Rider had a point about Stoddard maybe only thinking about his car when he avoided hitting Bosch.

  The front door of the small World War II-era house was open. There was no sign of the patrol officers from the car. Bosch looked at Rider and saw that she was unholstered as well. They were ready to go in. At the door, Bosch shouted, "Detectives coming in!"

  He stepped into the threshold and got a response from inside.

  "It's clear! It's clear!"

  Bosch didn't relax or lower his weapon as he entered the living room. He scanned the room and didn't see anyone. He looked down at the coffee table and saw the Daily News from the previous day unfolded, the story on Rebecca Verloren on display.

  "Patrol coming out!" a voice called from a hallway to the right.

  Soon two patrol officers stepped out of the hallway into the living room. They carried their weapons at their sides. Now Bosch relaxed and lowered his own.

  "All clear," said the patrolman with the P2 stripes on his uniform. "We found the door open and came in. There's something you ought to see back here in the bedroom."

  The patrolmen led the way and Bosch and Rider followed. They went down a short hallway that passed the open doors to a bathroom and a small bedroom that was used as a home office. They entered a bedroom and the P2 pointed to an oblong wooden box that was open on the bed. The box had a foam lining with a cutout in the shape of a long-barreled revolver. The cutout was empty and the gun was gone. There was a small rectangular cutout in the foam for a box of bullets. It was empty, too, but the box was nearby on the bed.

  "Is there someone he's going after?" the P2 asked.

  Bosch didn't look up from the gun box.

  "Probably just himself," he said. "Either of you guys have gloves? Mine are in the car."

  "Right here," the P2 said.

  He pulled a pair of latex gloves out of a small compartment on his equipment belt. He handed them to Bosch, who snapped them on and then picked up the bullet box. Bosch opened it and slid out a plastic tray in which the bullets were stored. There was only one bullet missing.

  Bosch was staring at the space left by the missing bullet and thinking about things when Rider tapped him on the elbow. He looked at her and then followed her gaze to the table on the other side of the bed.

  There was a framed photo of Rebecca Verloren. It was a shot of her standing in a green field with the Eiffel Tower behind her. She was wearing a black beret and she was smiling in an unforced way. Bosch thought the look in her eyes was sincere and showed love for the person she was looking at.

  "He wasn't in any of the pictures in the yearbook because he was the one behind the camera," Bosch said.

  Rider nodded. She, too, was in the water tunnel.

  "That's where it started," she said. "That's where she fell in love with him. My true love."

  They stared in somber silence for a few moments until the P2 spoke.

  "Detectives, can we clear?"

  "No," Bosch said. "We need you to stay here and secure the house until SID gets here. And be ready in case he comes back."

  "You're leaving?" the P2 asked.

  "We're leaving."

  40

  THEY MOVED QUICKLY back to Bosch's car and Rider once again got behind the wheel.

 
"Where to?" she said as she turned the ignition.