The Crossing

by Michael Connelly

  “Your partner abandoned you, Long,” he said. “First, he uses you as a human shield and then he drops you like a bag of oranges. That’s some partner.”

  Bosch patted him on the back and then moved away. He went to the other doorway to check on Schubert. The doctor was lying on his back, his head under the bathroom sink and his left leg folded awkwardly underneath his body. There were two impact wounds in his upper chest and one in the center of his neck. One of them had clipped his spine, causing him to drop the way he had. His eyes were open and he wasn’t breathing. There was nothing Bosch could do. He couldn’t fathom why Schubert thought that if he gave himself up to Ellis and Long, he would be spared. He wondered if he should feel remorse for leading him on, convincing him he was a cop on a case.

  He didn’t.

  As Bosch knelt next to Schubert, he became aware of a pulsing tone from the desk phone on the floor behind him. It had disconnected from the call to the Sheriff’s communication center when Bosch had tipped over the desk. He turned from the body, found the handset, and reunited it with the base, leaving it on the floor. He also saw a shattered frame that had fallen from the desk. It contained a photo of Schubert and his wife sitting in the cockpit of a sailboat and smiling at the camera.

  The desk phone started to ring, one of the buttons flashing. Bosch picked up the handset and pushed the button.

  “Harry Bosch.”

  “This is Sheriff’s Deputy Maywood, who am I speaking with?”

  “I just told you, Harry Bosch.”

  “We are outside the Center for Cosmetic Creation. What is the situation in there?”

  “We’ve got one dead and one wounded. And then me—I made the nine-one-one call. One gunman escaped. Did you get him?”

  Maywood ignored Bosch’s question.

  “Okay, sir, I want you to listen closely. I need you and the wounded man to come out of the building with your hands behind your head, fingers laced. If you have any weapons, leave them inside the building.”

  “I don’t think the wounded man’s going to be walking anytime soon.”

  “Is he armed?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Okay, then, sir, I need you to come out now—hands laced behind your head. Leave all weapons inside.”

  “You got it.”

  “If we see a weapon, we will consider it a provocative action. Are we clear, sir?”

  “Crystal. I’m coming down in the elevator.”

  “We’ll be waiting.”

  Bosch disconnected and stood up. He looked around for a place to leave his Glock and saw Long’s gun on the floor next to the right side of the desk. He went over and picked it up, careful not to touch the trigger and obliterate a fingerprint with his own. He put both weapons on top of a glass display cabinet that contained a collection of antique surgical instruments.

  Before leaving the office, Bosch looked around in the debris on the floor for his phone. It had slid across the floor when he had tipped over the desk. He picked it up and looked at the screen. It was still recording. He turned it off and named the file “Schubert.” He then texted it to Mickey Haller and put the phone in his pocket.

  He started toward the doorway but thought about something. He had no idea how long he would be held and questioned by the Sheriff’s Department. He had no idea if news of the shooting would reach the mountains outside the city. But just in case, he made a call to his daughter. He knew she had spotty cell service but he left her a message.

  “Maddie, it’s me. Just wanted you to know I’m okay. Whatever you hear, I’m okay. If you call and can’t reach me, call Uncle Mickey. He’ll fill you in.”

  Bosch pulled the phone away and was about to disconnect, when he had a second thought and raised the phone again.

  “I love you, Mads, and I’ll see you soon.”

  He ended the call.

  As he left the office, Bosch had to step around Long in the doorway. The vice cop was not moving. His breathing was shallow now and his face was very pale and dotted with sweat. There was also a growing stain of blood on the floor next to him.

  “Get me an ambulance,” Long managed to say, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’m dying.”

  “I’ll tell them that,” Bosch said. “Anything else you want to tell me before I go? Maybe something about Ellis? Like where he would run from here?”

  “Yeah, I’ll tell you something. How ’bout fuck you.”

  “Good one, Long.”

  Bosch stepped into the hall and started to retrace his path to the elevator. But two steps into it, he realized that there was a possibility that Ellis was still in the building. He could have been too late with his escape and seen Sheriff’s deputies responding. It was possible he had retreated and was hiding.

  Bosch quickly returned to the office and retrieved his Glock. He then moved back into the hallway and toward the elevator, moving in a combat stance with the gun up and braced.

  He got to the elevator without seeing any sign of Ellis. He pushed the button and the doors opened immediately. The stainless steel box was empty and he stepped in. He pushed the button for the ground floor and the doors closed. As the elevator dropped, Bosch quickly took the magazine out of the Glock and ejected the round in the chamber. He loaded the loose bullet into the magazine and put it and the weapon down on the floor in the back corner of the elevator. He then turned to the doors, raised his hands, and laced his fingers together behind his head.

  When the doors opened a moment later, Bosch saw a Sheriff’s patrol car parked sideways across the elevator entry area with two deputies using it as cover, their weapons drawn and aimed at him. One man had his two-handed grip extended over the front hood, the other was similarly positioned across the rear trunk.

  “Step out of the elevator,” the front man called out. “Keep your hands behind your head.”

  Bosch started to step out as instructed.

  “My gun is on the floor of the elevator,” Bosch called out. “It is unloaded.”

  The moment Bosch cleared the elevator, he saw the men on the car raise their weapons. That gave him a split-second notice that he was about to be taken to the ground. Deputies came from either side of the elevator and grabbed him. He was taken down face-first on the tiled floor, then his arms were yanked behind his back and he was handcuffed.

  Pain shot through Bosch’s jaw. He had turned his face at the last moment during the takedown but still took the full impact along the left side of his face and jaw.

  He felt hands roughly going through his pockets and removing his phone, wallet, and keys. He saw a pair of polished black patrol boots take a position in front of his face. The deputy squatted down and Bosch could see the lower half of his face if he turned his eyes up toward him. He saw sergeant stripes on the sleeves of the uniform. The man was looking at Bosch’s retired officer ID card. He then squatted down to look at Bosch.

  “Mr. Bosch, I’m Sergeant Cotilla. Who else is inside the building?”

  “Like I said on the phone, you got one dead and one wounded,” Bosch answered. “That’s all I know for sure. There was a third man but he ran. He could possibly be hiding in there but I don’t know for sure. The wounded man will be dead soon if you don’t get a medical team to him. He’s an LAPD vice officer named Kevin Long. As near as I could tell, he was hit once in the side, above the left hip.”

  “Okay, we have paramedics en route. And the dead man is who?”

  “Dr. Schubert, the guy who owns this place.”

  “And you are former LAPD.”

  “Retired this year. I’m now a private detective. I’m also the one who shot Long—before he could shoot me.”

  There was a long silence as Cotilla digested that last piece of information. Like a smart street cop, he decided that Bosch’s statement was for others to respond to.

  “We’re going to put you in a car, Mr. Bosch,” he said. “The detectives will want to talk to you about all of that.”

  “Can you make a call out to Detective
Sutton?” Bosch asked. “This is related to the two-bagger yesterday in the Sunset Plaza jewelry store. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be his case.”

  48

  This time they didn’t put him in the boardroom at the West Hollywood substation. He was placed in a gray-walled interrogation room, the eye of a camera watching him from above. They kept him handcuffed and didn’t give him back his phone, wallet, or keys.

  The Glock was as good as gone, too.

  At the two-hour mark Bosch’s hands were numb and he was growing increasingly restless from the wait. He knew full well that the investigators—whether led by Dick Sutton or not—would be at the crime scene, supervising the collection and documentation of physical evidence. But what frustrated Bosch was that no one had even conducted a five-minute preliminary interview with him. For all he knew, the information he had given Sergeant Cotilla had not been forwarded to the investigators and there wasn’t even a Wanted alert out yet on Don Ellis. Bosch figured that he could be across the Mexican border before the Sheriff’s Department finally put out the alert.

  At the 150-minute mark he got up and walked to the door of the box. He turned his back to it and used his hands to try to turn the knob. As he expected, the door was locked. Angrily he started kicking backwards toward the door, driving his heel into the kick panel. It created a loud noise that Bosch expected would bring a response—if not directly to the box, then to the cameras.

  He looked up, certain that his actions were now being monitored by the camera gazers.

  “Hey!” he yelled up. “I want to talk. Send somebody in to talk to me. Now!”

  Twenty more minutes went by. Bosch was considering whether to start breaking the furniture. The table was old and scarred and looked as though it had withstood the assaults of many. But the chairs were different. They were newer and the support struts were thin enough that Bosch knew he could break them with his feet.

  He looked up at the camera.

  “I know you can hear me,” he called out. “Get somebody in here now. I have important information. Dick Sutton, Lazlo Cornell, Sheriff Martin himself. I don’t care, a killer is getting away.”

  He waited a beat and was about to start another rant when he heard the door being unlocked. It opened and in stepped Dick Sutton. He acted like he had no idea what Bosch had been through for the last three hours.

  “Harry, sorry to hold you up in here,” he began. “I’ve been working the crime scene and am just now getting back over here to talk to you and see what we’ve got.”

  “Well,” Bosch said, “you just saved the station having to replace the furniture in here, because I was about to start busting the place up. I can’t feel my hands, Dick.”

  “Oh, Jesus, they shouldn’t have done that. Turn around and let me get those.”

  Bosch turned his back to Sutton and soon felt the relief of blood circulating in his hands again.

  “Sit down,” Sutton said. “Let’s talk.”

  Bosch was rubbing his hands together, trying to get rid of the pins and needles sensation. He kicked out a chair and sat down.

  “Why was the door locked, Dick?” he asked.

  “Precaution,” Sutton said. “We had to see what we had first.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s a complicated scene. You told the sergeant out there that a fourth man was involved and that he got away.”

  “That’s right, Don Ellis. He’s Long’s partner, though he threw him under the bus back there.”

  “How so?”

  “Used him as a shield when the shooting started. Then left him behind. Speaking of Long, did he make it?”

  “Yeah, he made it. Just a few blocks from Cedars—that was lucky. My partner’s over there now, hoping to get in a room with him and hear his story.”

  “I wish I could be there for that. The guy’s going to lie his ass off and put everything on me, or if he’s smart, he’ll put it on Ellis.”

  “We’ll worry about Long later. I want to hear your story, Harry. You told the sergeant that these are the two guys who took down the jewelry store yesterday?”

  “That and Lexi Parks and a male pro in Hollywood a couple months ago. They’ve been busy.”

  “All right, we’ll get to all of that, but tell me what happened up in that office today.”

  “I can tell you but you could also hear it for yourself.”

  This gave Sutton great pause. Bosch nodded.

  “Bring me my phone,” Bosch said. “I recorded my whole interview with Schubert on my phone. It was still taping when Ellis and Long showed up.”

  “You’re saying you have the shooting on tape?” Sutton said.

  “That’s right. But you can’t access it without a warrant. You want to hear it now, bring me the phone. I’ll play it for you. Bring Cornell and Schmidt in here. I want them to hear it, too.”

  Bosch considered in that moment whether he should ask for Haller to be called in as well, but he let the thought go. The last time he had called Haller in, things had not gone well. Bosch had been in a thousand interview rooms before, and there was no move a detective could make that he wouldn’t see coming. He felt he could protect himself as well as Haller could protect him.

  Sutton got up and moved toward the door.

  “Dick, one other thing,” Bosch said.

  Sutton paused, hand on the doorknob.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Heads-up on the recording,” Bosch said. “My coaching tip is to make sure it is handled right. It can’t disappear or get buried. You’re not the only one who has it.”

  “Haller?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you took the time to send it to him before you surrendered out there?”

  Bosch nodded.

  “I’m not stupid, Dick,” he said. “The LAPD isn’t going to like the way this case falls out and I don’t think the Sheriff’s Department is going to like the outcome much either. You’ve got a guy in county for a killing Long and Ellis did. So, yeah, I took the time to get it to my lawyer.”

  Sutton opened the door and left.

  49

  Bosch had to be moved back to the boardroom for the playing of the recording from his phone. This was to accommodate the crowd of investigators and brass who needed to listen to the forty-two-minute audio accounting of what happened in Dr. Schubert’s office. There was Sutton, of course, and Schmidt and Cornell, as well as two detectives from the LAPD’s Officer Involved Shooting team and one from the Internal Affairs Division.

  The IAD investigator was Nancy Mendenhall and Bosch knew her from a case when he was still with the department. His experience with her had been good and fair. Seeing her in the group gathered around the oval table put a positive spin on things for Bosch. He knew she would listen and do the right thing—as far as she was allowed. Also in the room was Captain Ron Ellington, commander of LAPD’s Professional Standards Bureau, which included Internal Affairs. He was Mendenhall’s boss and was there because it would be his report on the exploits of Ellis and Long that would land on the desks of the chief of police and the Police Commission.

  Even though the shooting had occurred on Sheriff’s Department turf, the investigation was now a joint-department affair because of the involvement of Ellis and Long. Sutton explained this after the group was seated around the table. He also announced that there was a recording of the shooting and that he wanted the group to hear it first. He invited Bosch to offer commentary where needed as it played.

  The phone was then placed on speaker mode and the recording played, with Bosch stopping the playback from time to time to describe things visually or to explain how Schubert’s responses to questions fit with the investigation of the murder of Alexandra Parks and the murders that followed. Only Mendenhall took notes. The others just listened and sometimes cut off Bosch’s explanations as if they didn’t want him to interpret the meaning of things said in Schubert’s office.

  Halfway into the playback, the recording wa
s interrupted when Mickey Haller’s name popped up on the screen. He was calling Bosch’s phone.

  “It’s my lawyer,” Bosch said. “All right if I take this?”

  “Fine,” Sutton said. “Make it quick.”

  Bosch stood up and took the phone out of the room and into the hallway so he could have some privacy.

  “I’ve listened to the recording. Thank Christ you’re okay, brother,” Haller said.

  “Yeah, it was a close one,” Bosch said. “I’ve just been playing it to a room full of cops—Sheriff’s and LAPD.”

  There was a pause as Haller digested that.

  “I’m not sure that was the right move,” he finally said.

  “It’s the only move,” Bosch said. “It’s the only way I’m going to get out of here tonight. Besides, there are at least two in there I trust to do the right thing. One from each team.”

  “Well, no doubt the recording is the Holy Grail. I wanna go in with a nine-nine-five as soon as we can. DQ’s going to walk right out of county after this. You did it, man. I was so fucking right about you.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see.”

  Bosch knew that a 995 motion in this case was essentially a petition to the court to change its mind based on new evidence. It would be filed before the judge who had held Da’Quan Foster over for trial at the preliminary hearing.

  “Where are you, Whittier or West Hollywood?” Haller asked.

  “West Hollywood substation,” Bosch said. “The same gang as before with a few more from the LAPD in the mix now.”

  “I bet they’re not happy.”

  “No, doesn’t look like it. Ellis and Long are their guys.”

  Sutton stuck his head out from the boardroom and twirled a finger, signaling Bosch to wrap up the call and get back to the meeting and the playback. Bosch nodded and held up a finger. One minute.

  “You need me to come over and kick some ass?” Haller asked.

  “No, not yet,” Bosch said. “Let’s see how it goes. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “Okay, but remember what I told you last time. They’re not your friends anymore, Harry, and they certainly aren’t Da’Quan Foster’s friends. Watch yourself.”