The Burning Room

by Michael Connelly

  “You have got to be kidding,” Soto said.

  “I wish,” Bosch said.

  “Did you ever get the guy—Tomlinson?”

  “Eventually. He tried to do the same thing, start over in some Podunk town with a Podunk police department in Minnesota. Except that department had a chief who had retired out of L.A. and religiously checked the wanted posters that came across his desk. He recognized Tomlinson and made the arrest. That was last year.”

  “Well, at least they got him in the end.”

  “Yeah, but that little snafu in Oklahoma got him another four years of freedom. It’s a funny story until you consider that.”

  Bosch’s phone vibrated and he checked the screen. It was the Historical Society, so he took the call. The secretary to the director told Bosch that the material requested in the warrant had been retrieved from storage and was available for pickup. Bosch said he was on his way.

  The squad room was almost deserted when they got back. Soto carried the hotel registration book they had just picked up at the Historical Society, because it had been decided in the car that she would work the names. She had already looked at the name registered to what was room 211 on the day of the Merced shooting, the room where the shot was believed to have come from. Rodolfo Martin was listed as the guest in that room. But she would run the names of all guests listed on the registry through various law enforcement data banks, checking for criminal records, aliases, and anything else that would draw attention to them.

  She immediately went to work while Bosch tried to catch the captain before he left for the day. He was hoping to get travel approval so he could book a flight to Tulsa. Crowder was already standing and pulling on his suit coat when Bosch entered the office.

  “Harry, make me happy,” he said.

  It was his normal greeting when a detective entered without being called in.

  “We’re working on it, Cap. It looks like we have a line on a key witness in Tulsa and—”

  “What kind of witness?”

  “He was one of the victim’s bandmates. Some stuff has come up and we really need to talk to him. In person.”

  “What’s wrong with a phone call?”

  “He’s not a forthcoming witness. We think he knew something he didn’t say before. With the original team. That, plus he split town right after the shooting.”

  “Aren’t these mariachi guys kind of itinerant? They go where the work is, right?”

  “That’s true, but you don’t leave Los Angeles for Tulsa if you’re a mariachi. The work’s here.”

  Crowder adjusted his jacket and sat back down behind his desk to continue the conversation.

  “Maybe he’s the only mariachi in Tulsa.”

  Bosch stared at him blankly for a moment.

  “Are you saying we can’t go, Captain?”

  “Is he considered dangerous?”

  Bosch nodded, not because Ojeda was considered dangerous but because he now understood why Crowder was hedging on the trip to Tulsa. He was worried about the travel budget. He had sent a memo out a couple weeks earlier saying that travel in the last two months of the year would be considered and approved on a priority basis because the unit’s travel budget—already the highest of any unit in the Department—had been depleted earlier than expected. It was memos like these—seemingly putting a changing value on catching killers—that frustrated Bosch to no end.

  Crowder was asking if interviewing Ojeda would be a dangerous assignment because he knew if he sent only one detective, he could cut the cost of the trip in half.

  “That’s not going to work,” Bosch said.

  “What’s not going to work?” Crowder responded.

  “Sending just one of us. If you go with one, it will have to be Soto because we don’t know if this guy speaks English. She’s good—I can already tell that. But I don’t know if you want to send her out by herself a month into the job.”

  “No, you’re right . . .”

  “She’s got to go and I’ve got to go. We think this guy may have been the intended target.”

  Crowder didn’t respond to that. He said nothing else, which Bosch took to mean that he was contemplating turning the whole trip down and telling Harry to handle it by phone.

  “You heard what I said, right? We think the bullet may have been meant for this guy in Tulsa.”

  “Yes, I heard what you said. You left out that you only think he’s in Tulsa. He could be in Timbuktu as far as you know for sure.”

  “True. But if he is, we’ll pick up the trail in Tulsa.”

  That was greeted with another dose of silence.

  “Look, Captain, there’s gotta be some discretionary funds up there on the tenth floor,” Bosch finally offered. “I mean, Malins is all over this. So let him put some money where his mouth is. . . . Or maybe we go to the ex-mayor, since he’s the one throwing reward money around.”

  Crowder made a calming gesture with his hand.

  “We don’t want to go to the ex-mayor. He’s already caused enough problems for us.”

  And then he made his decision, moving quickly from all out to all in.

  “Okay, look, don’t worry about the money. The money’s my issue. When do you want to go?”

  Bosch answered quickly, hoping to seal the deal and get out of the office before there was another change of mind.

  “The sooner the better. We’ve got a line on him working in a bar. I’d like to get out there tomorrow. If he’s going to be at the bar he’ll probably be there then—Friday being paycheck day and the start of the weekend.”

  “All right, plan on that. I’ll know where the money comes from by tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks, Captain.”

  Bosch went back to the cubicle. When he got there he saw that his seat had been pulled over to Soto’s desk and was occupied by Sarah Holcomb, the detective Samuels had put in charge of handling phone-in tips spawned by the reward announcement.

  “We get anything good?” he asked as he entered the small cubicle.

  Holcomb immediately started rising from the stolen desk chair. Bosch put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m going to go get a cup.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. Either of you want coffee?”

  Both women said no.

  “Well, did you solve it for us, Holcomb? Get a confession?”

  “Not quite.”

  Soto handed him a tip sheet.

  “This one’s interesting, though,” she said.

  Bosch took the page and read the summary Holcomb had written.

  Caller said Merced shooting connected to Bonnie Brae fire 1993. Caller said Merced knew who set the fire and was threat.

  Bosch checked the back of the page to see if there was any more. It was blank. He handed it back to Soto, who had turned in her seat and was staring up at him, knowing the call had come from him.

  “I take it this was anonymous?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Holcomb said. “It was from a pay phone at Union Station. I checked out the number.”

  Bosch looked over the top of the page at her. He was surprised she had taken the initiative to run the number. But that was also why he had taken the precaution of calling from a pay phone.

  “I guess we should take a look at it,” he said. “’Ninety-three—I think that year belongs to Whittaker and Dubose. We should talk to them, see if this rings a bell. Seems kind of thin but maybe we can take a look at the book on Bonnie Brae. Cross-reference it for names.”

  “Do you want me to do that?” Holcomb asked eagerly.

  “No, we’ll talk to them,” Bosch said. “Just don’t put too much stock in these call-ins. People have agendas, you know?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Holcomb said. “Some of them are so transparent about it, too.”

  “Anything else halfway legit?”

  There was a whole stack of tip sheets on the desk.

  “Not really,” Holcomb said. “I was just giving
Lucy the low-lights.”

  She referred to a clipboard on which she had condensed the calls to one-liners.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “Caller said talk to ‘Sleepy,’ who is in the neighborhood over there and knows about all the White Fence shootings.”

  “‘Sleepy,’ ” Bosch said. “Okay.”

  Holcomb moved down her list.

  “Female caller says the mayor knows all about who did the shooting. I’m assuming she meant the ex-mayor but I didn’t talk to her. That one came in on the overnight tape. Anonymous. Somebody with a heavy Spanish accent.”

  “Nice,” Soto said. “Rat out the guy who put up the reward.”

  Bosch smiled.

  “You have to admit, the motive’s pretty creative,” he said. “Zeyas had Merced shot and paralyzed so he could roll him out during the campaign to help win the election.”

  “Great plan,” Soto said. “Worked perfectly.”

  “What else?” Bosch said.

  “Well, we got several suggestions that we look into white supremacy groups,” Holcomb said. “Several more that were sure the drug cartels were behind the shooting. And we had one caller who says the shooter was this guy named Felix who was angry because he had hired some mariachis from the plaza and they had performed badly. Oh, and there was also the guy who called in and said he was sure it was the Mexican Mafia, only he wasn’t sure why.”

  “All in all, very helpful,” Bosch said.

  “You bet,” Holcomb said. “And I haven’t even mentioned all the calls from the racists who said Merced got exactly what he deserved simply because he was Mexican.”

  It was all part of what was expected when a reward was put out to the public. All the crazies came out. None of it surprised Bosch and none of it was worth a second thought—except for the follow-up on the Bonnie Brae tip. He thanked Holcomb for her perseverance and left to get a cup of coffee out of the machine on the first floor.

  When he got back, Holcomb was gone. Bosch and Soto conferred and he told her to bring a packed bag to work the next day because it looked like they were going to go to Tulsa to find and question Ojeda.

  “There might be a problem,” she said.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “I was just on the computer and I did find a bar called El Chihuahua, but when I called and asked—”

  “You called?”

  “Yes, you said we needed to try to confirm he was there.”

  “Yeah, but not by calling him directly. That could spook him.”

  “Well, as it turns out, I didn’t talk to him directly or even indirectly. I called and asked if he was in and the man who answered said no one worked there named Ojeda.”

  “Maybe he quit. It’s been ten years.”

  “I asked. You know, did he ever work there, and this guy on the line said no, that he’d never heard of him. And he said he had been there ten years.”

  Bosch thought about that for a long moment, juxtaposing it with Cabral’s information. Cabral had seemed honest and sure of what he had told them.

  “We’re still going,” he finally said. “Tomorrow. I hope you didn’t have plans.”

  She shook her head. Bosch already knew she didn’t have a boyfriend and he now knew that much of her free time was probably spent on the Bonnie Brae case.

  “Well, should I call the Tulsa police and see if Ojeda is known to them?”

  “No, you never do something like that. Remember what I told you about Beacon? You don’t tip the locals unless you have to.”

  Chastised, Soto changed the subject.

  “How do you want to handle Whittaker and Dubose?” she asked.

  “You handle it—if it’s me, they might think something’s up. Just keep them out of it. Tell them we got the tip and ask for a look at the books.”

  “What if they saw my name in the reports? On the witness list. I was interviewed back then.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “That’s not how they work. They didn’t read the reports. They only accessed the case for scientific evidence. They don’t move their asses unless there’s science.”

  Soto nodded but looked concerned.

  “What?” Bosch asked.

  “Did you make sure there were no cameras near the phone booth when you made that call?” she asked.

  That froze Bosch for a moment. He had not been that careful.

  “I didn’t even check,” he finally said. “But this tip isn’t going to pan out, so there will be no reason for anybody to check for cameras.”

  “Well, we didn’t expect Holcomb to be running the numbers either,” Soto said. “But she did. I don’t want you getting into trouble.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

  “Well, it’s just that there’s some rumors going around that the Department’s so heavy with these DROP contracts that they’re looking for ways to push people out before the end of the contract to save some money.”

  “Now, how did you hear something like that? You’re at least twenty years away from even thinking about a DROP contract.”

  “The Blue Line. There were some letters from officers in last month’s issue. That’s what they were saying.”

  Bosch nodded. He had read the same letters. The Deferred Retirement Option Plan had started out as something with the best intentions all around. It was a plan to keep experienced officers and detectives working for the Department instead of taking those skills elsewhere when their pensions maxed. In effect, it allowed them to bank their pensions and start over at full pay with a second pension accruing and earning high interest. But politics and bureaucracy set in and the plan had to be offered to anyone who reached twenty-five years in, no matter their job or skill level. Now too many were on the DROP, and the interest was threatening to bankrupt the plan. The Department was looking for ways to stop the bleeding, including forcing officers out of their five-year contracts early.

  “I’m not worried about it,” Bosch said. “The only thing I have to worry about right now is you and making sure you’re ready to carry the torch when I’m out of here.”

  Soto looked at him and tried to hide a smile.

  “I’ll be ready,” she said.

  “Good,” he said.

  Bosch’s daughter had a rare night at home. With Explorer meetings and activities and even a part-time volunteer job delivering dinners to shut-ins, she seemed to use the house only for sleeping these days. This bothered Bosch because he knew his time with her was short, but he also knew she was pursuing things she wanted. And all the activities counted as public service at her school and would help round out her application package for college. She had her eye on Cal State, Los Angeles, where there were top criminal justice and forensics programs. Bosch was pleased with her choice because it was still in the city. Besides that, the school was located on the same site as the lab, which would afford him the opportunity to see her at school on occasion during his last few months on the job.

  They spent the evening preparing a swordfish steak dinner and talking about the Explorer assignment for the following Tuesday. Maddie and others in her Explorer unit were going to be used in an undercover sting operation in which they would be wired and sent into convenience stores in Hollywood to see if employees would allow them to purchase alcohol. Maddie was excited about it, and as undercover operations go it was relatively safe. But Bosch wanted to make sure she understood that in any operation, there was always a possibility of things going sideways. She couldn’t rely on the undercover officer who went into the store ahead of her or the patrol units waiting nearby. She had to keep her eyes open at all times.

  “I will, Dad, I will,” she said.

  In recent months she had perfected the dismissive, I-know-this-already tone when speaking with him on almost any subject.

  “It doesn’t hurt to repeat it,” Bosch said. “You want me to be there?”

  “No, that would be embarrassing!”

  She said it as though he had suggested tagging along on a p
rom date.

  “Okay, okay, just checking.”

  They were on the back deck, where he was grilling the fish on a small gas grill. He flipped the steaks and changed the direction of the conversation.

  “So I’m hoping to be back by Sunday afternoon,” he said. “Maybe we can have dinner again that night.”

  He had already told her about the trip to Tulsa. She was used to his frequent work trips and was always fine by herself.

  “Sunday I have M-O-W,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Meals on Wheels. Her volunteer work for the organization had greatly cut into the time Bosch enjoyed most with her—sharing a meal and talking.

  “Maybe I need to sign up for that. It might be the best way for me to see you at night.”

  “Dad, you know I need to do this. I want to get into Cal State and get some scholarship money. This will all help.”

  “I know, baby, I know. Here I am complaining and I’m the one going to Tulsa.”

  He used a fork to push the steaks onto a plate. Dinner was ready.

  “You have to go,” she said. “You don’t have many cases left.”

  Bosch nodded. She was right about that.

  On the way inside to the table, she told him she was thinking about getting a nose ring over the weekend so she could really look the part for the sting operation.

  Bosch managed not to drop the plate.

  “You mean you are going to put a hole through your nose where there isn’t supposed to be a hole?”

  “Yeah, I think it will be kind of cool. I won’t have to keep it. Less permanent than a tattoo.”

  The food smelled great but Bosch wasn’t sure he was hungry anymore.

  14

  Bosch and Soto took an 11 a.m. flight to Tulsa with a stop in Dallas. They got lucky on the first flight and had an empty seat between them in economy class. This became the storage space for the murder books from both the Merced and Bonnie Brae cases. Bosch was determined to use any downtime during the trip to review the Bonnie Brae case for Soto and to continue to read and reread the reports on the original Merced investigation. He firmly believed and it had been his repeated experience that the answers to most cases are hidden in the details. Both cases offered volumes of details.