“So he opened the box, planted Olmer’s DNA, and put new labels on it.”
“He opened the bottom seam, because your signature was on the labels on top. And because his labels were old and yellow, the box looked totally legit. The thing is, we don’t think it was the only time. We got a search warrant for his house too, and we found some receipts from a pawn shop in Glendale. We checked there and he’s a regular customer, selling jewelry mostly. We think he might have been raiding boxes from closed cases, looking for valuables to pawn. He probably thought since the cases were old and closed, nobody would ever look.”
“So when Cronyn asked Spencer if he could get something into a box, he said no problem.”
“Exactly.”
Bosch nodded. The mystery was solved.
“What about the Cronyns?” he asked. “I assume they’re going for a one-for-one deal, right?”
“Probably,” she said. “She walks and he takes the hit. He’ll get disbarred but then he’ll just prop her up. Everyone will know that if you hire her, you hire him.”
“And that’s it? No jail time? The guy used the law to try to break a killer out of prison. Death row, no less. He gets a slap on the wrist?”
“Well, last I heard, they were still in jail because Houghton won’t set bail till tomorrow. Anyway, it’s early in negotiations, Harry. But Spencer still isn’t talking, and the only one who is talking is Borders. When your one and only witness is a murderer on death row, you don’t have a case you want to take to a jury. This is going to come down to plea agreements all around, and maybe Cronyn goes to jail, maybe not. Truth is, they’re more interested in nailing Spencer because he was inside the wire. He betrayed the department.”
Bosch nodded. He understood the thinking on Spencer.
“The department’s management team has already moved in,” Soto said. “They’re revamping the whole booking-and-retrieving process so that something like this can never happen again.”
Bosch moved to the wooden railing and leaned his elbows down. It was still at least an hour from sundown. The 101 freeway down in the pass was clogged in both directions. But there were very few sounds of horns. Drivers in L.A. seemed resigned to a fate of waiting in traffic without the kind of impotent cacophony of horns that Bosch always seemed to hear in other cities he’d visited. He always thought his deck gave him a unique angle on that distinctive L.A. trait.
Soto joined him at the railing and leaned down next to him.
“I didn’t really come up here to talk about the case,” she said.
“I know,” Bosch said.
She nodded. It was time to get to it.
“A really good detective who used to mentor me taught me to always follow the evidence. That’s what I thought I was doing with this thing. But somewhere I got manipulated or I took a wrong turn and I ended up where the evidence told me something my heart should have known was flat-out wrong. For that I’m truly sorry, Harry. And I always will be.”
“Thank you, Lucia.”
Bosch nodded. He knew she could have easily blamed it all on Tapscott. He was the senior detective in the partnership and he called the final shots on case decisions. Instead, she put it all on herself. She took the weight. That took guts and that took a true detective. Bosch had to admire her for it.
Besides, how could he hold anything against Soto when he had heard in his own daughter’s voice a worry that it all might be true, that Harry had fixed a case against an innocent man?
“So...,” Lucia asked. “Are we good again, Harry?”
“We’re good,” Bosch said. “But I sure hope people read the paper tomorrow.”
“Fuck anybody who still has a doubt after today.”
“I’ll go with that.”
Soto straightened up. She had said what she’d come to say and was ready to go home. Soon she would be in the iron ribbon of traffic he was staring down at.
She poured the remainder of her bourbon into Bosch’s glass.
“I gotta go.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming here to talk. Means a lot, Lucia.”
“Harry, if you need anything or there’s anything I can do for you, I owe you. Thanks for the booze.”
She headed for the open slider. Bosch turned and leaned back against the railing.
“There is, actually,” he said. “Something you could do.”
She stopped and turned around.
“Daisy Clayton,” he said.
She shook her head, not getting it.
“Am I supposed to know that name?”
Bosch shook his head and stood straight.
“No. She was a murder victim from before you ever made it to homicide. But you’re on cold cases. I want you to pull the file and work it.”
“Who was she?”
“She was a nobody, and nobody cared. That’s why her case is still open.”
“I mean who was she to you?”
“I never knew her. She was only fifteen years old. But there’s somebody out there who took her and used her and then threw her away like trash. Somebody evil. I can’t work the case because it’s Hollywood. Not my turf anymore. But it is yours.”
“You know what year?”
“Oh-nine.”
Soto nodded. She had what she needed, at least to pull the case and review it.
“Okay, Harry, I’m on it.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll tell you what I know when I know it.”
“Good.”
“See you, Harry.”
“See you, Lucia.”
42
After showering and changing into street clothes, Bosch went to the closet next to the front door and pulled the fireproof box off the shelf. He used a key to open it. It contained old legal documents, including birth certificates and his discharge papers from the U.S. Army. Bosch kept his wedding ring in the box as well as his two Purple Hearts, and the two life-insurance policies that listed his daughter as beneficiary.
There was also a faded color photo of Bosch and his mother. It was the only photograph of her he had, so he had always wanted to keep it safe rather than display it. He looked at it now for a few moments, this time his eyes drawn to his own image at eight years old rather than to his mother’s. He studied the hopefulness in the boy’s face and wondered where it had gone.
He put the photo to the side and dug further into the strongbox until he found what he was looking for.
It was an old sock stuffed with a rubber-banded roll of money. Without pulling it out of the sock now or counting it, Bosch shoved it into the side pocket of his jacket. The roll of money was the earthquake fund, mostly large bills he had been accumulating slowly — a twenty here and a fifty there — since the last big earthquake in 1994. In L.A., nobody wanted to be stuck without cash when the big one hit. ATMs would be knocked off-line and banks would be closed in a time of civic catastrophe. Cash would be king and Bosch had been planning accordingly for over twenty years. By his estimate, there was close to ten thousand dollars in the sock.
He put the other items back into the box, taking one last look at the mother-and-son photo. He had no recollection of posing for the shot or where it had been taken. It was a professional shot with a white — now yellowed — background. Maybe young Harry had tagged along with her when she had gotten head shots for her efforts to be cast as a movie extra. Maybe she then paid the photographer a little more for a quick photo with her son.
Bosch drove up the hill to Mulholland and then followed the snake to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which dropped him down the north side into the Valley. As soon as he got bars on his phone, he called Bella Lourdes on her cell. He expected that she would be off duty and home by now. Still, she answered right away.