He turned and walked away, barking an order to his men. He wanted a telephone with a secured line. Bosch wondered who the first call would go to, T. Rex Garland or the chief of police.
Bosch made a snap decision. He would call Keisha Russell and turn her loose. He would tell her she was clear to look into those campaign contributions Garland had funneled to O’Shea. He put his hand into his pocket and then remembered that his phone was still somewhere in the garage. He walked that way and stopped at the yellow tape that was strung across the now fully opened door behind the white van.
Cal Cafarelli was in the garage, directing the forensic analysis of the scene. She had a breathing-filter mask down around her neck. Bosch could tell by her face that she had been to the macabre scene at the end of the tunnel. And she would never be the same again. He waved her over.
“How’s it going, Cal?”
“It’s going about as well as you’d expect after seeing something like that.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“We’re going to be here long into the night. What can I do for you, Harry?”
“Have you found a cell phone somewhere in here? I lost my phone when things started happening.”
She pointed to the floor near the front tire of the van.
“Is that it over there?”
Bosch looked over and saw his phone lying on the concrete. The red message light was blinking. He noticed that someone had circled it on the concrete with chalk. That was not good. Bosch didn’t want his phone inventoried as evidence. He might never get it back.
“Can I get it back? I need it.”
“I’m sorry, Harry. Not yet. This place hasn’t been photographed. We’re starting with the tunnel and moving out from there. It will be a while.”
“Then how about if you give it to me and I use it right here and then I give it back when it’s time to take photos. It looks like I’ve got messages waiting.”
“Harry, come on.”
He knew that his suggestion would break about four rules of evidence.
“Okay, just let me know when I can get it back. Hopefully before the battery’s dead.”
“You got it, Harry.”
He turned away from the garage and saw Rachel Walling walking toward the yellow tape that delineated the outside perimeter of the crime scene. There was a federal cruiser there and a man in a suit and sunglasses was waiting for her. She had apparently called for a ride.
Bosch trotted toward the tape, calling her name. She stopped and waited for him.
“Harry,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“I am now. How about you, Rachel?”
“I’m fine. What happened to you?”
She indicated his wet clothes with her hand.
“I had to hose off. It was bad. I need about a two-hour shower. Are you leaving?”
“Yes. They’re done with me for the time being.”
Bosch nodded toward the man in the sunglasses ten feet behind her.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know yet. I should be all right. You got the bad guy and saved the girl. How can that be a bad thing?”
“We got the bad guy and saved the girl,” Bosch corrected. “But there are people in every institution and bureaucracy who can find a way to turn something good into shit.”
She looked him in the eyes and nodded.
“I know,” she said.
Her look froze him and he knew they were now different.
“Are you mad at me, Rachel?”
“Mad? No.”
“Then, what?”
“Then, nothing. I have to go.”
“Will you call me, then?”
“When I can. Good-bye, Harry.”
She took two steps toward the waiting car but then stopped and turned back to him.
“That was O’Shea you were talking to out by the car, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful, Harry. If you let your emotions run you the way they did out here today, O’Shea could put you in a world of pain.”
Bosch smiled slightly.
“You know what they say about pain, don’t you?”
“No, what?”
“They say pain is weakness leaving the body.”
She shook her head.
“Well ‘they’ are full of shit. Don’t put it to the test unless you have to. Good-bye, Harry.”
“I’ll see you, Rachel.”
He watched as the man in sunglasses held the tape up for her to duck under. She got into the front passenger seat and Sunglasses drove them off. Bosch knew that something had changed in the way she saw him. His actions in the garage and going into the tunnel had made her change her mind about him. He accepted it and guessed that he might never see her again. He decided that it would be one more thing that he would blame on Rick O’Shea.
He turned back to the scene, where Randolph and Osani were standing waiting for him. Randolph was putting away his cell phone.
“You two again,” Bosch said.
“Gettin’ to be like déjà vu all over again, isn’t it?” Randolph said.
“Something like that.”
“Detective, we are going to need to take you over to Parker Center and conduct a more formal interview this time around.”
Bosch nodded. He knew the drill. This time it wasn’t about shooting into the trees or the woods. He had killed somebody, so this time it would be different. They would need to nail down every detail.
“I’m ready to go,” he said.
31
BOSCH WAS SEATED in an interview room in the Officer Involved Shooting Unit at Parker Center. Randolph had allowed him to shower in the basement locker room and he’d changed into blue jeans and a black West Coast Choppers sweatshirt, clothing he kept in a locker for the times he was downtown and unexpectedly needed to fly below the radar that a suit would bring. On the way out of the locker room he had dumped his contaminated suit into a trash can. He would now be down to two.
The tape recorder on the table was turned on, and from separate sheets of paper, Osani read to him his constitutional rights as well as the police officer’s bill of rights. The double insulation of protections was designed to safeguard the individual and police office from the unfair assault of the government, but Bosch knew that when push came to shove, in one of these little rooms neither piece of paper would do much to protect him. He had to fend for himself. He said he understood his rights and agreed to be interviewed.
Randolph took over from there. At his request Bosch once more told the story of the shooting of Robert Foxworth, aka Raynard Waits, beginning with the discovery made during the review of records from the Fitzpatrick case and ending with the two bullets he fired into Foxworth’s chest. Randolph asked few questions until Bosch was finished going through the story. Then he asked many detailed questions about the moves Bosch had made in the garage and then the tunnel. More than once he asked Bosch why he didn’t listen to the cautioning words of FBI agent Rachel Walling.
This question told Bosch not only that Rachel had been interviewed by the OIS but also that she had not said things particularly favorable to his case. This disappointed Bosch greatly but he tried to keep his thoughts and feelings about Rachel out of the interview room. To Randolph he repeated as a mantra a sentence that he believed would ultimately win the day for him, no matter what Randolph or Rachel or anyone else thought of his actions and procedures.
“It was a life-or-death situation. A woman was in jeopardy and we had been fired upon. I felt that I could not wait around for backup or anybody else. I did what I had to do. I used as much caution as I could and used deadly force only when necessary.”
Randolph moved on and focused many of the next questions on the actual shooting of Robert Foxworth. He asked Bosch what he was thinking when Foxworth revealed that Bosch had been set up to believe that the Gesto case was solved. He asked Bosch what he was thinking when he saw the remains of Foxworth’s victims positioned in the chamber at the end of the tunnel. He asked Bosch what he was thinking when he pulled the trigger and killed the defiler and murderer of those victims.
Bosch patiently answered each question but finally hit his limit. Something was off-kilter about the interview. It was almost as if Randolph were working from a script.
“What’s going on here?” Bosch asked. “I’m sitting here telling you people everything. What aren’t you telling me?”
Randolph looked at Osani and then back at Bosch. He leaned forward, arms on the table. He had a habit of turning a gold ring on his left hand. Bosch had noticed him doing it last time. He knew it was a USC ring. Big deal. A lot of the department’s ruling class had gone through night school at USC.
Randolph looked back at Osani and reached over to turn the tape recorder off but held his fingers on the buttons.
“Detective Osani, could you go get us a couple bottles of water? All this talking and my voice is about to go. Probably the same with Detective Bosch, too. We’ll hold up until you get back.”
Osani got up to leave and Randolph turned off the recorder. He didn’t speak until the interview room door was closed.
“The thing is, Detective Bosch, we only have your word on what happened in that tunnel. The female was unconscious. There were only you and Foxworth, and he didn’t make it out alive.”
“That’s right. Are you saying my word is not acceptable?”
“I’m saying that your description of events might be perfectly acceptable. But the forensics might come in with an interpretation that varies from your statement. You see? It can get messy very quickly. Things can be left open to interpretation and misinterpretation. Public and political interpretation as well.”