The Crossing

by Michael Connelly

  “Got it.”

  Bosch disconnected and went back in.

  The playback continued, and at the thirty-four-minute mark, the intensity in the boardroom palpably heightened when on the recording Bosch said, “Is there anybody else here?”

  Where Bosch had mostly kept quiet during the playback of the interview with Schubert, he now felt compelled to offer descriptions of what was happening in the office to supplement what was captured on the recording. The recording was clear to a zone of about six feet. Sounds and voices more distant were fuzzy and lacking clarity. Bosch tried to be brief with his descriptions so as not to overlap what was coming from the phone.

  “We heard a noise, like a door closing out in the hall.…”

  “I was listening at the door to the office and I heard one of them say, ‘Clear.’ I knew they were out there searching for us.…”

  “I tipped the desk over because my first plan was to make a barricade.…”

  “The first three were Ellis shooting Schubert. The doctor had his hands up and posed no threat. He shot him three times. Then that was me yelling there and firing. Four shots, I think, at first. Then two more when Ellis was backing out, using Long as a shield.”

  The recording ended with Bosch’s announcement to the deputy on the office phone that he was coming out. There was a gulf of silence from the investigators gathered around the table. Bosch then noticed Cornell shake his head and lean back in his chair in a dismissive manner.

  “What?” Bosch said. “You’re going to stick with Foster as your guy?”

  Cornell pointed at the phone that still sat in the middle of the table.

  “You know what that is?” he asked. “It’s just a bunch of words. You’ve got nothing—no evidence—that directly links these two to Parks. And let’s not forget, you’re a guy suing your own department and you’ll do anything to embarrass it.”

  Now Bosch shook his head dismissively and looked at Sutton, who was still in the posture he had adopted while listening to the playback, leaning forward, hands clasped on the table. He now extended a finger and pointed at Bosch’s phone.

  “I need you to send me that,” he said.

  “Me, too,” Mendenhall said.

  Bosch nodded and picked up his phone. He moved a file containing a copy of the recording into an e-mail and then handed his phone to Sutton so he could type in his e-mail address. The process was then repeated with Mendenhall.

  “Now what?” Bosch asked.

  “You can go,” Sutton said.

  Cornell made another gesture of dissatisfaction, tossing a hand up in the air. Sutton ignored it.

  “Do us a favor, Harry,” Sutton said. “We’ve got a bunch of TV reporters outside the station, doing their stand-ups for the eleven-o’clock news. Don’t talk to them about any of this, huh? That won’t help anybody.”

  Bosch stood up, putting his phone away.

  “No worries,” he said. “What about the rest of my stuff? Wallet, gun, car?”

  Sutton frowned.

  “Uh, we’ll get you your wallet,” he said. “The car and gun we’re going to need to hang on to for the moment. We’re going to put together a full ballistics package and we’ll need the weapon for that. And that whole building is taped off and considered a crime scene right now. We’ll be working it for a few more hours. All right if we wait on the car until tomorrow morning?”

  “No problem. I’ve got another at home.”

  He knew he had another gun at home as well, but he didn’t mention that.

  Standing up, Mendenhall put her notebook away in a leather satchel that doubled as purse and briefcase and probably contained her service weapon as well.

  “I can give you a ride,” she said.

  50

  Mendenhall drove her company car toward Hollywood. Bosch judged that there had been a purpose beyond courtesy to her offering to give him a ride. After telling her he lived in the Cahuenga Pass, he got down to business, turning in his seat to look at her. She was a brunette with dark eyes and smooth skin. Bosch put her at late forties. Looking at her hands on the wheel, he saw no rings. He remembered that from Modesto. No rings.

  “So, how come you ended up with this mess?” he asked.

  “I would say it’s because of my familiarity with you. Your last interaction with IA is in litigation, so that created a conflict of interest with O’Dell. I was next on the list because of Modesto.”

  Bosch’s lawsuit against the department for unfair labor practices named IAD investigator Martin O’Dell as a defendant along with several others involved in his being forced to retire. A few years before, Bosch had worked a case in which Mendenhall had trailed him to Modesto on suspicion that he was acting outside the policies of the department. She ended up helping him escape from captors who intended to kill him and clearing him of any departmental wrongdoing. The episode left Bosch with something he had never known before—respect for an Internal Affairs investigator. There had been a connection between them in Modesto. But because at the time he was the subject of an investigation being conducted by her, Bosch never did anything about it.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said.

  “You can ask me anything, Harry,” she said. “But I’m not promising to answer. Some things I can’t talk about. But just like before, you be straight with me, I’ll be straight with you.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Which way should I go, Laurel Canyon up to Mulholland or down to Highland and then up?”

  “Uh, I’d take Laurel Canyon.”

  His suggested route would take longer than the other choice. He hoped to be able to use the extra time to draw more information out of her.

  “So, did Ellington tell you ahead of time to give me a ride? Maybe get me to talk outside the room?”

  “No, it was just spur of the moment. You needed a ride. I offered. If you want to tell more, I’ll certainly listen.”

  “There is something more, but let me ask a few questions first. Let’s start with Ellis and Long. Big surprise today in IAD, or were they a known quantity?”

  “Well, you really don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “They’re bad cops. You guys go after bad cops. I’m just wondering if they were already on the radar.”

  “I can’t go into specifics, but, yes, they were on the radar. The thing is, we’re not even remotely talking about the level of action we are looking at today. It involved use of time complaints, insubordination. But usually when you have those things happening, they’re indicators of bigger problems.”

  “So no external complaints. All department bred.”

  “No, none.”

  “What about Long? Is he going to make it?”

  “He’ll recover.”

  “Is he talking?”

  “Last I heard, not yet.”

  “And nobody’s got a line on Ellis?”

  “Not yet, but not for lack of trying. It’s a Sheriff’s Department op, but we’re all over it. RHD, Major Crimes, Fugitives—they don’t want this to blow up into another Dorner. They want a quick end to it.”

  Christopher Dorner was an ex-LAPD cop who went on a killing rampage a couple years before. A massive manhunt ended at a cabin near Big Bear where he killed himself during a firefight with officers who had surrounded the location. His notoriety was such that within the department his last name had become a noun applied to any officer controversy or scandal involving crazy and deadly behavior.

  “So, the big question,” Bosch said, “is whether there’s a case? Are they going to be charged?”

  “That’s actually two big questions,” Mendenhall said. “The answers, as far as I’m concerned, are yes and yes. But it’s a Sheriff’s case. You never know. We will be looking into anything on our turf, which includes James Allen and whatever else those two had going.”

  Bosch nodded and let some more asphalt go under the car before responding.

  “So you want my coaching tip on Allen?” he asked.
/>   “Of course,” she said.

  “Check out the UC car lot behind the Hollywood Athletic Club. On the back row against the wall is a burnt-orange Camaro that’s been taken out of circulation.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m pretty sure Ellis and Long were using it back in March when Allen got dumped in that alley.”

  “The trunk?”

  Bosch nodded.

  “I’ll order a full forensic workup,” she said.

  “You get something, send a copy of the report to that asshole Cornell.”

  Bosch could see Mendenhall smile in the glow from the dash lights. They drove in silence for a while. She made the turn onto Mulholland and started east. When she spoke, it had nothing to do with the case at hand.

  “Harry, I’m curious. Why didn’t you call me after Modesto?”

  Bosch was caught off guard.

  “That’s a curve ball,” he managed to say while trying to formulate an answer.

  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” she said. “It’s just that I thought we had a connection when we were up there. Modesto. I thought you might call.”

  “Well, I just thought…you know, that with you being in IAD and me being investigated, it would have been uncool to follow up on anything. That could end up with you being the one investigated.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. Bosch looked over at her and couldn’t read her reaction.

  “Forget it,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Very unprofessional. Keep asking your questions.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, what is the current thinking on Ellis and his whereabouts?”

  “The current thinking is Mexico,” she said. “He probably had a getaway package ready to go. Car, money, probably multiple IDs. He lived alone and it looks like he never went back after he left Schubert’s office.”

  “He’s in the wind.”

  She nodded.

  “He could be anywhere.”

  51

  Ellis waited in darkness, his face a dim shade of blue cast by the light of a phone screen. He waited to take care of the last detail before his exit. His final touch and statement on this place that had changed him in so many ways.

  He checked his news feed and reread the story. It contained the slimmest grouping of facts and had not been updated in at least two hours. He knew it was all that would be released tonight. The press conference had been scheduled for the morning, when the sheriff and chief of police would share a podium and address the media together. Ellis considered sticking around to watch it live on local TV, to see how the chief tried to spin it. But his survival instinct overrode that desire. He knew that the hours in between would be best used to put distance between himself and the city. This ugly city that hollows people, corrodes them from the inside out.

  Besides, he would get everything on the news feed. The story would no doubt break big and national. Especially after they found Bosch. And after they found the twins.

  He thought about the twins. They had not been watching the news. They knew nothing and expected nothing but the usual from him. Even when they saw the weapon in his hand, they believed he was there to protect them from some outside threat. They died thinking that.

  He opened the photo app on the phone and went to the archives. He had taken three shots of the twins in final repose. But he realized it was impossible to tell that they were dead in these photos. Their faces had been so sculpted and stretched and reshaped by surgeries as to look frozen in both life and death.

  After a while he went back to the news feed once more. Still nothing new on the events in Schubert’s office. There wasn’t even an update on Long’s medical status. All that had been reported so far was that he was alive and being treated at Cedars, where he was listed in critical condition.

  Long’s name had not been put out publicly. The stories just said he was an LAPD vice officer who was off duty at the time of the shooting. No explanation was offered for what he was doing at the plastic surgery center where the events occurred.

  There was no mention of Ellis either. No word that they were looking for him or that he had even been at the site. All of that would come in the morning when the chief of police stood before the media and tried to put the spin on another story of cops gone wrong.

  Ellis wondered how much time he would have before Long started talking. He had no doubt that it would happen eventually. Long was the weak one. He could be manipulated. That was why Ellis had chosen him. But now the others would manipulate him. The investigators. The interrogators. The attorneys. They would squeeze him, break him down, and then finally give him a glimpse of light, and he would go for it. It would be a false light but he would not know that.

  Once more Ellis reviewed his situation. Had he ever made any mention to Long about his exit strategy? The getaway plan was only as good as its self-containment. It only worked if just one person knew the plan, and once more Ellis reassured himself that Long knew nothing. He was safe.

  52

  After being dropped off in front of his house, Bosch went into the carport to the Cherokee. Sutton had kept the keys to Bosch’s rental car but not the ring that had his house and personal car keys on it. He quietly unlocked the Jeep’s front door and leaned in behind the wheel. He reached under the driver’s seat and then up into the springs. His hand found the grip of the Kimber Ultra Carry. He brought it out and checked the action and the magazine. It had served as his backup gun for the last decade of his LAPD career. He put a bullet into the chamber and was good to go.

  From a low crouch he unlocked the kitchen door and pushed it open. As it swung into the house, he raised his weapon but was greeted with only a still darkness. He reached up and in and flicked the double switches on the inside wall. The lights in the galley kitchen as well as the hallway beyond came on.

  Bosch advanced through the kitchen and flicked the same lights off when he got to the opposite end. He didn’t want to be illuminated as he stepped into the hallway and farther into the house.

  Bosch moved slowly and cautiously through his home, lighting rooms as he searched them. There was no sign of Ellis. When he got to the last room—his daughter’s bedroom—he turned around and cleared every room and closet again.

  Satisfied that his hunch that Ellis might make a move against him was wrong, Bosch started to relax. He turned on the lights in the living room and went to the stereo. He hit the power button and put the needle down on the album already on the turntable. He didn’t even look to see what it was.

  He put his gun down on the stereo receiver and, stripping his jacket off, tossed it over to the couch. He was dead tired from the long and strenuous day but too keyed up for sleep. The first strains of trumpet rose from the speakers and Bosch knew it was Wynton Marsalis playing “The Majesty of the Blues,” an old one he had picked up recently on vinyl. The song seemed appropriate to the moment. He opened the slider and stepped out onto the back deck.

  He went to the railing and exhaled deeply. The night air was crisp and carried the scent of eucalyptus. Bosch checked his watch and decided it was too late to call Haller and update him. He’d make contact in the morning, probably after seeing how the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department played things out at the press conference that was sure to be scheduled. What the sheriff and chief of police said would surely dictate Haller’s strategy.

  He leaned down, put his elbows on the railing, and looked at the freeway at the bottom of the pass. It was after midnight and yet the traffic persisted in both directions. It was always that way. Bosch was unsure that he would ever be able to sleep comfortably in a house without the background sound of the freeway from below.

  He realized that he should have entered the house the way his daughter always did after school. That is, immediately stopping at the refrigerator upon entering through the kitchen door. In his case a nice cold beer would have tasted perfect right about now.

  He heard the voice behind him before he heard an
ything else.

  “Bosch.”

  He turned slowly, and there was a figure shrouded in the darkness of the back corner of the deck, where even the faint moonlight was blocked by the roof’s eave. Bosch realized he had walked right past him when he stepped onto the deck. The shadows in the corner were too deep to see a face but he knew the voice.

  “Ellis,” Bosch said. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  The figure stepped forward. First the pointed gun entered the dim moonlight, then Ellis. Bosch looked past him into the living room where he could see the Kimber left on the stereo receiver. It would do him no good now.

  “What do you think I want?” Ellis said. “Did you think I would just run without paying you a visit?”

  “I didn’t think you were that stupid,” Bosch said. “I thought you were the smart one.”

  “Stupid? I’m not the one who came home alone.”

  “You should have gone to Mexico while you had the head start.”

  “Mexico is so obvious, Bosch. I have other plans. Just have to finish up a little bit of business here.”

  “That’s right, you’re a no-loose-ends sort of guy.”

  “I couldn’t risk that you wouldn’t give it up. We checked you out, Bosch. Retired and relentless are two things that don’t mesh together very well. I couldn’t risk that you’d keep looking for me. The department will give it up. Bringing me back for trial is not something that’s going to make anybody’s priority list at the PAB. But you…I figured I needed to end it right here before going.”

  Ellis took another step toward Bosch, closing the distance for the shot. He fully emerged from the darkness. Bosch could see his face. The skin was drawn tight around eyes that had a wet glint at their black center. Bosch realized it might be the last face he ever saw.

  “Going where?” he asked.

  Harry raised his hands slowly, out to his sides, as if to underscore his vulnerability. To let Ellis know he had won and allow him the moment.