“I don’t need your help on the specific case I’m working but there is another case that I heard about that might be related in some way. I just need to get a line on it, find out what it is.”
He paused to give her a chance to shut it down but she said nothing. So far so good, Bosch thought. He’d had no doubt that she would do the favor for him but he didn’t want her to feel compromised or fear that he might put her in any departmental crosshairs. They had only talked a few times since he had walked out the door of the Open-Unsolved Unit the year before, never to return. When he had checked in with her after the first of the year to see how she was doing, he learned that she had already been hit with some of the blowback from his departure.
The captain of the unit had partnered her with a veteran detective named Stanley O’Shaughnessy. Known as Stanley the Steamer by most of the other detectives in the Robbery-Homicide Division, O’Shaughnessy was the worst kind of partner to be saddled with. He didn’t work hard at solving murders but was very active when it came to discussing what was wrong with the department and filing complaints against other detectives and supervisors who he felt had slighted him. He was a man who let his frustrations and disappointments with his life and career paralyze him. Consequently, his partners never stayed with him for long unless they had no choice in the matter. Soto, being the low man on the totem pole in RHD, would probably be stuck with Stanley the Steamer until the next round of promotions brought new blood into the division, and that was only if a new detective coming in had less seniority than her. Since Soto had been on the job less than eight years, the chances of that were almost nonexistent. She was stuck and she knew it. She spent her days largely working cases on her own and only bringing in O’Shaughnessy when department policy required two partners on an excursion.
All of this had been accorded her because she had been Harry Bosch’s partner for the last four months of his career and had refused to rat him out in an Internal Affairs investigation prompted by the same captain who handed out the partner assignments. When she had told Bosch how she had landed, all he could do was encourage her to leave O’Shaughnessy behind and go out and work cases, knock on doors. She did that and called Bosch a few times to tap into his experience and ask his advice. He had been happy to give it. It had been a one-way road like that until now.
“Do you know the murder journals in the captain’s office?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’m looking for a case. I don’t have a name or an exact date, only that it was in Hollywood and probably took place within a week after March nineteenth this year.”
“Okay, but why don’t I just look it up on CTS and do it real quick?”
CTS was the LAPD’s internal Crime Tracking System, which she could access from her computer. But to access it she would have to sign in with her user key.
“No, don’t go on CTS,” Bosch said. “I have no idea where this will go, so just to be safe, don’t leave any digital fingerprints.”
“Okay, got it. Anything else?”
“I don’t know if it will be in the journal but the victim was a prostitute. Might be listed as a dragon or a tranny or something like that. The street name was Sindy, spelled S-I-N-D-Y, and that’s all I got.”
In the age of electronic data compilation and storage, the LAPD still kept a tradition of logging every murder in a leather-bound journal. The journals had been religiously kept since September 9, 1899, when a man named Simon Christenson was found dead on a downtown railroad bridge — the first recorded murder in the LAPD’s history. Detectives at the time believed Christenson had been beaten to death and then placed on the tracks so a train would hit his body and the killing would look like a suicide. It was a misdirection that didn’t work, yet no one was ever charged with the murder.
Bosch had read through the journals regularly when he worked in RHD. It was a hobby of sorts, to read the paragraph or two written about every murder that had been recorded. He had committed Christenson’s name to memory. Not because it was the first murder, but because it was the first and it was never solved. It always bothered Bosch that there had been no justice for Simon Christenson.
“What do I tell the captain?” Soto asked. “He’ll probably ask me why I’m looking at that case.”
Bosch had anticipated the question before he made the call to her.
“Don’t tell him you’re looking at a specific case,” he said. “Pull the latest journal and tell him you’re just trying to keep up with what’s going on out there. A lot of guys check those books out. I read through every one of them at least once.”
“Okay, got it. Let me get my coffee now, and then I’ll go back up and do it first thing.”
“Thanks, Lucia.”
Bosch disconnected and thought about next steps. If Lucia came through, then he’d have a starting point on the Sindy case. He might be able to determine if there was any link to Lexi Parks and whether Da’Quan Foster’s alibi was for real.
While Bosch waited for the callback from Soto, his daughter emerged from her bedroom dressed for school, her backpack slung over a shoulder.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m late.”
She grabbed her car keys off the table by the front door. Bosch got up from the table to follow her.
“Not going to eat again?” he asked.
“No time,” she said, moving toward the door.
“Maddie, I’m starting to get worried about this.”
“Don’t. Just worry about that killer guy you’re working for.”
“Oh, come on, Mads. Don’t be so dramatic. If the guy’s a killer he won’t be going anywhere. Trust me, okay?”
“Okay. Bye.”
She went through the front door, letting it bang loudly behind her. Bosch just stood there.
After an hour of waiting for Soto to call, Bosch started to worry that something had gone wrong with the captain when she went into his office to look at the murder journal. He started pacing, wondering if he should call to check on her but knowing that an ill-timed call from him — if she was in a jam with the captain — might make matters worse. Besides, if she was in a jam, there was nothing he could do about it. He was an outsider now.
Finally, after another twenty minutes, his phone buzzed and he saw on the screen that she was calling from her desk phone. He’d expected that when she called, it would be on her cell and from outside the building, or at least from a stall in the women’s room.
“Lucia?”
“Hi, Harry. I got you some information.”
“You’re at your desk. Where’s the Steamer?”
“Oh, he’s probably off filing a complaint or something. He came in and then mysteriously left without saying anything. He does that a lot.”
“Well, at least that means he’s out of your hair. So you got a look at the journal?”
Bosch sat down at the dining room table and opened his notebook. He took out a pen and got ready to write.
“I did and I’m pretty sure I found your case.”
“No problem with the captain?”
“No, I said what you told me to say and he sort of waved me off, told me to have at it. No problem. To make it look good I took a couple of the other journals, too. The first one goes back to eighteen ninety-nine.”
“Simon Christenson.”
“God, how do you remember that?”
“I don’t really know. I just do. Killed on a bridge and nobody ever charged.”
“Not a good start for LAPD homicide, huh?”
“No, not good. So, what did you find for me?”
“March twenty-first, the body of James Allen, white male, age twenty-six, was found in an alley running parallel to Santa Monica Boulevard at El Centro. It was behind an auto repair shop. Victim was a prostitute with multiple hits for solicitation, drug possession, the usual stuff. That’s all it says in the journal other than that the case was assigned to RHD and detectives Stotter and Karim.”