The Crossing

by Michael Connelly

  Loose ends and unexplained details always bothered Bosch. Unanswered questions. They were the bane of the homicide detective’s life. Sometimes they were big questions, sometimes not, but they were always a pebble in the shoe. The missing watch still bothered him. The husband’s explanation only answered one question with another. Why had she not turned the watch in for repair in its box? Had she simply dropped off the expensive watch at the jeweler’s?

  That didn’t completely make sense to Bosch and so he could not put the watch aside.

  He was also anxious about the Allen case and the need to keep moving forward. When a case stalled, it was often difficult to get momentum back. Sometimes it was like trying to start a car with a dead battery.

  He called Lucia Soto’s cell.

  “You still at the PAB?”

  “Yep. About to move the red magnet.”

  Bosch remembered the board the captain had put up in the squad room. Each detective slid a red magnet to the off-duty square when checking out for the day. A stupid little device to give the captain a sense of control. He had probably gotten the idea from a book on corporate management. When he was with the department Bosch had always made it his practice to ignore the magnets. He felt like he was always on duty.

  “You feel like that drink tonight?” he asked.

  “Tonight? Uh—”

  “I want to pick your brain about what you saw in the Allen file.”

  “Uh, well, yeah, I guess I could meet. When?”

  “Whenever, wherever you want.”

  “Really? You’ll come to my turf?” She sounded impressed.

  “Your turf is my turf. Name the time and place.”

  “Okay, how about eight? I’ll be at my local in Boyle Heights.”

  “Which is?”

  “Eastside Luv on First, a couple blocks from Hollenbeck Station.”

  Bosch heard the carport door to the kitchen open and knew his daughter was home. He had been so consumed with the phone call that he had not heard her car pull in.

  “Okay, I’ll be there,” he said into the phone.

  “Cool,” Soto said. “See you then.”

  He disconnected the call. He heard Maddie stop at the refrigerator before emerging from the kitchen, a juice bottle in hand, backpack over her shoulder.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, Mads.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just finished a call. How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Homework?”

  “Lots.”

  “Sorry. Listen, I’m going to need to go out for a couple hours in a little while. You okay making dinner or ordering in?”

  “No problem.”

  “You will eat something, right?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  He was thankful for that and thankful that so far she hadn’t brought up anything about his work on the defense case for Mickey Haller.

  “Who are you going out with, Virginia?”

  “No, I’m meeting my old partner for a drink.”

  “Which old partner?”

  “Lucia.”

  “All right, cool.”

  “Hey, there’s something I should probably tell you about Virginia. We’re not going out anymore.”

  “Really? What happened?”

  “Uh, um, I don’t know, we just hadn’t really been seeing each other a lot and…”

  “She dumped you.”

  Bosch hated that word.

  “It’s not that simple. We talked the other night at dinner and just sort of decided to let things go for now.”

  “She dumped you.”

  “Uh, yes, I guess so.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m good. I saw it coming. Kind of relieved.”

  “If you’re sure. I’m going to get to work.”

  “I’m okay. I’m sure.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.”

  “Okay.”

  Bosch was glad to get the awkward conversation over with. She turned toward the hallway. She always disappeared into her room to do her homework. He then remembered something.

  “Oh, wait. Take a look at this.”

  Bosch went to the table and picked up the folder containing the profiles.

  “You remember Dr. Hinojos? I happened to see her today and I asked if she had any case profiles that she could let me have to show you. I told her you wanted to study psychology and go in that direction. You know, profiling.”

  “Dad, don’t tell people that.”

  Her tone implied that he had deeply humiliated her. He didn’t understand his misstep.

  “What do you mean? I thought that’s what you wanted to do.”

  “It is, but you don’t have to go telling people.”

  “So then it’s a secret? I don’t—”

  “It’s not a secret but I don’t like everybody knowing my business.”

  “Well, I haven’t told everybody. I told a profiler who might be pretty helpful to you down the road.”

  “Whatever.”

  Bosch held out the folder. He had given up trying to understand the way Maddie thought and trying to identify and read her stressors. He invariably failed and said the wrong word or celebrated the wrong achievement or complimented the wrong thing.

  She took the file without saying thank you and headed toward the hallway leading to her room. A heavy backpack was slung over her shoulder. In the age of laptops and iPads and all manner of digital media, she still carried a big load of books wherever she went.

  It was another thing Bosch didn’t understand.

  “Why were you talking to Hinojos?” she said without looking back. “Was it about that creep you’re trying to get off for murder?”

  Bosch watched her go. He didn’t answer and she didn’t pause to hear a reply.

  22

  Eastside Luv was a corner bar with a mural on the outside wall showing an old mariachi with white whiskers and a wide-brim hat. Bosch had driven by it hundreds of times over the years but never stopped in once. It was an upscale hangout for the Chicano hipsters that were reinventing Boyle Heights block by block.

  The bar that was the centerpiece of the establishment was crowded two and three deep and most of those people turned to check out Bosch as he entered the front door. Los Lobos was blasting from the sound system, a song about a wicked rain coming down. Bosch moved his eyes across the space and found Soto sitting by herself at a table in the back corner. Bosch made his way to her and pulled out the chair opposite.

  “I didn’t take you for a Chipster,” he said. “I thought you might be more of a Las Palomas girl.”

  Las Palomas was the next bar down, a working-class watering hole with harsh lighting and harsher drinks. Bosch had been in there several times over the years looking for people.

  Soto laughed at his comment.

  “Sometimes I end up there, but not too often.”

  She had already ordered two bottles of Modelo. They picked them up and clinked glass.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” he yelled just as the music stopped.

  That brought another round of attention to him, and both he and Soto laughed.

  Soto looked like she was doing well. Her hair was down and she was wearing a sleeveless black shirt and faded jeans. Her smooth brown arms showed off the tattoos she wasn’t allowed to show on the job. There was an RIP list on the inside of her left forearm containing the names of lost friends from when she was growing up in Westlake, and a tat on the right arm that was a string of Spanish words wrapping her biceps in a font that looked like barbed wire.

  “Hard to park around here,” Bosch said. “I didn’t see your car in the back.”

  “I didn’t drive,” she said. “I Ubered it. A DUI would get me washed out of detectives and back on patrol.”

  They toasted that and drank more beer.

  “Uber—that’s that taxi thing, right?�
� Bosch asked.

  “Yes, it’s an app, Harry,” she said. “You should try it.”

  “Sure. What’s an app?”

  She smiled, knowing he knew what an app was but also knowing he would never try Uber or any other one.

  “So, you want to pick my brain, huh?”

  “Yeah, I just have more questions about—”

  “You don’t have to. You can just look at the book.”

  From the empty seat next to her she raised a red tote bag up onto the table and then peeled it down around a thick blue binder. Bosch recognized it as an LAPD murder book but he couldn’t comprehend how and why she had it.

  “Is that the Allen case?” he asked.

  “It is,” she said. “I sort of borrowed it off of Ali’s desk after he left for the day.”

  Bosch was stunned. It was an infraction far worse than what had gotten him suspended and pushed out of the department.

  “Lucia, you can’t do this,” he said. “The last thing I want you to do for me is something that could sink your whole career worse than a DUI. You—”

  “Harry, relax,” she said. “He’s never going to know. You can look at it right now and I’ll take it back tonight. Besides, he broke the rules. It’s supposed to be locked in the closet at night.”

  “I don’t care about him. You’re going to waltz in there after a few beers and just put it back on his desk?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “You are taking a big risk, Lucia. I don’t want it on my head if it goes sideways. What you already did was enough. I was just going to ask you some follow-ups, that’s all.”

  She nodded like his daughter always did when he spoke sternly to her. Soto was ten years older than Maddie but sometimes it was hard to tell. This was a foolish stunt.

  “Look, Harry, last year you took a big risk for me when we were partners,” she said. “I owe you this and I’m happy to be able to do it. So why don’t we stop talking about it and you look for what you need. I trust you. I know you’re working for a lawyer but I believe you when you say you’re looking for the truth, no matter how it falls.”

  Now it was Bosch’s turn to nod. He reached across the table and slowly pulled the binder across. The music had started up loud again, this time a song in Spanish with horns playing sharply in the background.

  “How about we go sit in my car?” he asked. “It’s so loud in here I can’t think straight.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Such an old man,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Bosch took one last pull on his bottle of beer and stood up.

  23

  Bosch looked at the crime scene photos first. It was the closest he could come to being called to the scene, observing the details, and conducting the on-site investigation.

  James Allen’s body was found fully clothed and propped against the back wall of an auto-repair and sales garage in an alley at Santa Monica Boulevard and El Centro. The alley was like most any other alley in a city where the infrastructure was crumbling, in a state where the infrastructure was crumbling. It was a patchwork of asphalt spot repairs and loose gravel over a crumbling base of decades-old concrete.

  Environmental shots of the spot where the body was discovered showed this part of the alley to be hidden well by the garage on one side and the back side of an apartment building on the other. The only windows on the apartment building that would give a view of the alley were glazed bathroom windows. Just another fifty feet up the alley going in from El Centro it opened wider to accommodate a large parking lot behind a four-floor brick loft building. The immediate impression Bosch got from viewing the photos was that the killer who left Allen’s body there knew the alley and knew he could dump the body at the end behind the car shop without being seen. It was possible he also knew that the body would be discovered the following morning when workers in the loft building entered the alley to reach their parking lot.

  Next Bosch studied the close-up shots of the body. The victim was clothed in a pair of gray running shorts and a pink collared shirt. No shoes, but on the feet were the kind of shoe liners worn by women to protect against blisters when wearing shoes without socks or stockings. On his head was a stocking cap that would have been worn under a wig. The shirt collar helped hide the braided wire that was cinched around the neck. The wire had been pulled so tight that it had cut into the skin. Bleeding was minimal because the heart had stopped pumping shortly after the wire cut the skin.

  The victim’s hairless legs were stretched out into the alley and his hands were lying in his lap. Close-up shots of the hands revealed no broken fingernails or blood. It made Bosch wonder if Allen had been somehow prevented from fighting against the wire as it was pulled tight around his neck.

  “What is it?” Soto asked.

  She was sitting in the passenger seat next to him and had been silent as Bosch went through the photos. She had smuggled her beer out of the bar and had been sipping it as she watched Bosch study the book.

  “What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

  “I’ve watched you look through a murder book before,” she said. “I can tell when you see something that doesn’t add up.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Well, there is no trauma to the hands. No blood, no broken fingernails. Somebody pulls a wire around your neck and you’d think your hands would go to your neck and start fighting the wire.”

  “So what is that telling you?”

  “Well, either that he wasn’t conscious when he was choked out or something or someone was holding his hands down. There’s no sign of binding marks on the wrists, so…”

  He didn’t finish.

  “What? No sign of binding means what?”

  “That maybe there were two.”

  “Two killers?”

  “One to hold him down and control his hands, one to work the wire. There are other things, too.”

  “I don’t think Karim and Stotter have tumbled to that. What other things?”

  Bosch shrugged.

  “Guy’s feet. No shoes but he’s wearing these liner socks.”

  “They’re called Peds.”

  “Okay, Peds. I don’t see any abrasions on the legs or anywhere else on the body from it being dragged.”

  Soto leaned across the center console to look closer at the photo Bosch was looking at.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “The body is propped against the wall,” he said. “Presumably it was removed from a car and put there. It was carried. The victim’s not a big guy. Sure, it could’ve been done by one person, but still. One person carrying him from a vehicle to that spot? I don’t know. It gives me pause, Lucia.”

  Soto just nodded after leaning back into her seat and taking another pull on her bottle.

  The photos were contained in plastic sleeves with three holes that allowed them to be secured by the three rings of the binder. Bosch flipped back and forth between photos, double-checking his statements. He then took his phone out and took a picture of one of the photos—a midrange shot that showed the body in its entirety slumped against the graffiti-covered rear wall of the car shop.

  “Harry, you can’t,” Soto said.

  He knew what she meant. If a photo of a crime scene photo turned up in court or anywhere else, it would be obvious that Bosch had had access to the murder book. That could spawn an investigation that would lead back to Soto.

  “I know,” Bosch said. “I’m just taking it to place the body on the wall. So I’ll know when I check out the alley. I want to get the location right, and this graffiti will help. After I go by there and check things out, I will destroy the photo. How’s that?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  Bosch moved on to the next set of photos. These were taken inside room 6 at the Haven House. This was when the room was still crowded with James Allen’s belongings. There were clothes in the closet, several pairs of shoes and high heels on the floor. Two wigs—one blond, one brunette—on stands on the bureau. Ther
e were several candles in the room—on the bureau, on both bed tables, and on the shelf above the headboard of the bed. Also on the shelf was a large clear plastic container half full of condoms. The brand label on the container was Rainbow Pride. The label advertised that the container held three hundred lubricated condoms in six different colors. Bosch took out his notebook and wrote down the details to give to Haller later. He noted that Soto’s observation when reporting on the photos the day before was correct. The condom container was similar to the candy containers he remembered seeing in doctors’ offices and at convenience store cash registers.

  Bosch closely scanned the photos of the motel room for any sign of a cell phone but didn’t see one. He knew there had to be one somewhere, because Da’Quan Foster had told Bosch during the interview at county jail that he had called Allen to arrange to meet him the night of the Lexi Parks killing.

  Bosch flipped over to section five of the murder book, which he knew would contain the property report. He studied the lists of items retrieved by investigators at both crime scenes—the alley and the motel room where Foster lived. There was no mention of a phone on either list.

  The conclusion: The killer had taken Allen’s phone because the phone contained a record of contact with him.

  Bosch quickly went through the book to see if Karim and Stotter had subpoenaed any phone records. There were none and no record that a subpoena had been written or filed, and this led Bosch to believe that Allen either used a legit phone that was registered to someone else or used a throwaway that would be impossible to procure records for without either the phone or its number and service provider in hand.

  Bosch made a note about going back to Da’Quan Foster and getting the number he used to contact Allen. That would be a start in tracing Allen’s phone activities.

  “Sorry,” Bosch said.

  “What are you talking about?” Soto said.

  “I’m sure you weren’t planning on spending your evening sitting in my car.”

  “It’s okay. Things don’t really get going in there until later. That’s when people start dancing on the bar and taking off their clothes.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m serious.”