When they got to the incinerator room the space was empty and there appeared to be no active burning of medical waste occurring. There was a three-foot canister on the floor. Its top was sealed with tape that said CAUTION: HAZARDOUS WASTE.
Bosch took out his key chain which had a small penknife on it. He squatted down next to the canister and cut the security tape. In his peripheral vision he noticed the security guard step back.
“Maybe you should wait outside,” Bosch said. “There’s no need for both of us to-”
He heard the door close behind him before he finished the sentence.
He looked down at the canister, took a breath and removed the top. Digoberto Gonzalves’s clothes had been haphazardly dropped into the container.
Bosch took the monitor Walling had given him out of his pocket and waved it over the open canister like a magic wand. The monitor remained silent. He let his breath out. Then, as smoothly as emptying a wastepaper basket at home, he turned the canister upside down and dumped its contents onto the concrete floor. He rolled the canister aside and once again moved the monitor in a circular pattern over the clothes. There was no alarm.
Gonzalves’s clothes had been cut off his body with scissors. There were a pair of dirty blue jeans, a work shirt, T-shirt, underwear and socks. There was a pair of work boots with the laces cut by the scissors as well. Lying loose on the floor in the middle of the clothing was a small, black leather wallet.
Bosch started with the clothing. In the pocket of the work shirt were a pen and a tire pressure gauge. He found work gloves sticking out of one of the rear pockets of the jeans and then removed a set of keys and a cell phone from the left front pocket. He thought about the burns he had seen on Gonzalves’s right hip and hand. But when he opened the right front pocket of the jeans there was no cesium. The pocket was empty.
Bosch put the cell phone and keys down next to the wallet and studied what he had. On one of the keys Bosch saw a Toyota insignia. Now he knew that a vehicle was part of the equation. He opened the phone and tried to find the call directory but couldn’t figure it out. He put it aside and opened the wallet.
There wasn’t much. The wallet contained a Mexican driver’s license with the name and photo of Digoberto Gonzalves. He was from Oaxaca. In one of the slots he found photos of a woman and three young children-shots that Bosch guessed were taken back in Mexico. There was no green card or citizenship document. There were no credit cards and in the billfold section there were only six dollar bills along with several tickets from pawnshops located in the Valley.
Bosch put the wallet down next to the phone, stood up and got out his own phone. He scrolled the directory until he found Walling’s cell number.
She answered his call immediately.
“I checked his clothes. No cesium.”
There was no response.
“Rachel, did you-”
“Yes, I heard. I just wish you had found it, Harry. I just wish this could be over.”
“Me, too. Did anything come through on the name?”
“What name?”
“Gonzalves. You called it in, right?”
“Oh, right, yeah. No, nothing. And I mean nothing, not even a driver’s license. I think it must be an alias.”
“I’ve got a Mexican driver’s license here. I think the guy’s an illegal.”
She gave that some thought before responding.
“Well, it’s believed that Nassar and El-Fayed came in across the Mexican border. Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe this guy was working with them.”
“I don’t know, Rachel. I’ve got work clothes here. Work boots. I think this guy-”
“Harry, I’ve gotta go. My team is here.”
“All right. I’m heading back up.”
Bosch pocketed his phone, then gathered the clothing and boots and put them all back in the canister. He put the wallet, keys and cell phone on top of the clothing and took the canister with him. On the long walk back down the hallway to the stairs he pulled out his phone again and called the city’s communications center. He asked the dispatcher to dig out the details on the paramedic call that had brought Gonzalves to Queen of Angels and was put on hold.
He got all the way up the steps and back to the ER before the dispatcher came back on the line.
“The call you asked about came in at ten-oh-five from a phone registered to Easy Print at nine-thirty Cahuenga Boulevard. Man down in the parking lot. Fire department paramedics responded from station fifty-four. Response time six minutes, nineteen seconds. Anything else?”
“What’s the nearest cross at that location?”
After a moment the dispatcher told him the cross street was Lankershim Boulevard. Bosch thanked her and disconnected.
The address where Gonzalves collapsed was not far from the Mulholland overlook. Bosch realized that almost every location associated with the case so far-from the murder site to the victim’s house to Ramin Samir’s house and now to the spot where Gonzalves collapsed-could fit on one page of a Thomas Brothers map book. Murder cases in L.A. usually dragged him all over the map book. But this one wasn’t roaming. It was staying close.
Bosch looked around the ER. He noticed that all the people who had been crowding the waiting room before were now gone. There had been an evacuation and agents in protective gear were moving about the area with radiation monitors. He spotted Rachel Walling by the nursing station and walked over to her. He held out the canister.
“Here’s the guy’s stuff.”
She took the canister and put it down on the floor, then called over to one of the men in protection gear. She told him to take charge of the canister. She then looked back at Bosch.
“There’s a cell phone in there,” he told her. “They might be able to get something out of that.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“How’s the victim doing?”
“Victim?”
“Whether he’s involved in this or not he is still a victim.”
“If you say so. He’s still out of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the chance to talk to him.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“What? Where? I’m going with you.”
“I thought you had to run the CP.”
“I passed it off. If there’s no cesium here I’m not staying. I’ll stick with you. Let me just tell some people I’m leaving to follow a lead.”
Bosch hesitated. But deep down he knew he wanted her with him.
“I’ll be out front in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know if Digoberto Gonzalves is a terrorist or just a victim, but I do know one thing. He drives a Toyota. And I think I know where we’ll find it.”
SEVENTEEN
HARRY BOSCH KNEW that the physics of traffic would not work for him in the Cahuenga Pass. The Hollywood Freeway always moved slowly in both directions through the bottleneck created by the cut in the mountain chain. He decided to stay on surface streets and take Highland Avenue past the Hollywood Bowl and up into the pass. He filled Rachel Walling in along the way.
“The call for paramedics came from a print shop on Cahuenga near Lankershim. Gonzalves must have been in the area when he collapsed. The initial call said a man was down in the parking lot. I’m hoping that the Toyota he was driving is right there. I’m betting that if we find it, we find the cesium. The mystery is why he had it.”
“And why he was foolish enough to put it in his pocket unprotected,” Walling added.
“You’re basing that on him knowing what he had. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe this isn’t what we think it is.”
“There’s got to be a connection, Bosch, between Gonzalves and Nassar and El-Fayed. He probably brought them across the border.”
He almost smiled. He knew she had used his last name as a term of endearment. He remembered how she used to do that.
“And don’t forget about Ramin Samir?” he said.