Angels Flight

Chapter 6

ONE of the men from IAD was a Latino named Raymond Fuentes. Bosch sent him along with Edgar to the address on Catalina Perez’s identification cards to notify her next of kin and to handle the questions about her. It was most likely the dead-end part of the investigation – it seemed apparent that Elias was the primary target – and Edgar tried to protest. But Bosch cut him off. The explanation he would share privately with Edgar later was that he needed to spread the IAD men out in order to give him better control of things. So Edgar went with Fuentes. And Rider was sent with a second IAD man, Loomis Baker, to interview Eldrige Peete at Parker Center and then bring him back to the scene. Bosch wanted the train operator at the scene to go over what he had seen and to operate the train as he had before discovering the bodies.

That left Bosch, Chastain and the last IAD man, Joe Dellacroce. Bosch dispatched Dellacroce to Parker Center as well, to draw up a search warrant for Elias’s office. He then told Chastain that the two of them would go to Elias’s home to make the death notification to his next of kin.

After the group split up, Bosch walked to the crime scene van and asked Hoffman for the keys found on the body of Howard Elias. Hoffman looked through the crate he had placed his evidence bags in and came out with a bag containing a ring with more than a dozen keys on it.

“From the front pants pocket, right side,” Hoffman said.

Bosch studied the keys for a moment. There seemed to be more than enough keys for the lawyer’s home, office and cars. He noticed that there was a Porsche key on the ring as well as a Volvo key. He realized that when the investigators finished the current crop of tasks, one assignment he would have to make would be to put someone on locating Elias’s car.

“Anything else in the pockets?”

“Yeah. In the left front he had a quarter.”

“A quarter.”

“Costs a quarter to ride Angels Flight. That’s probably what that was for.”

Bosch nodded.

“And in the inside coat pocket was a letter.”

Bosch had forgotten that Garwood had mentioned the letter.

“Let’s see that.”

Hoffman looked through his crate again and came up with a plastic evidence bag. Inside it was an envelope. Bosch took it from the crime scene tech and studied it without removing it. The envelope had been addressed to Elias’s office by hand. There was no return address. On the left lower corner the sender had written PERSONAL amp; CONFIDENTIAL. Bosch tried to read the postmark but the light was bad. He wished he still carried a lighter.

“It’s your neck of the woods, Harry,” Hoffman said. “Hollywood. Mailed Wednesday. He probably got it Friday.”

Bosch nodded. He turned the bag over and looked at the back of the envelope. It had been cleanly cut open along the top. Elias or his secretary had opened it, probably at his office, before he had put it into his pocket. There was no way of knowing if the contents had been examined since.

“Anybody open it?”

“We didn’t. I don’t know what happened before we got here. I understand that the first detectives saw the name on there and then recognized the body. But I don’t know if they actually looked at the letter.”

Bosch was curious about the contents of the envelope but knew it wasn’t the right time or place to open it.

“I’m going to take this, too.”

“You got it, Harry. Let me just get you to sign it out. And the keys, too.”

Bosch waited while Hoffman got a chain-of-evidence form out of his kit. He squatted down and put the envelope and keys into his briefcase. Chastain came over, ready to leave the scene.

“You want to drive or you want me to?” Bosch said as he snapped his case closed. “I’ve got a slick. What have you got?”

“I still have a plain jane. Runs like dogshit but at least I don’t stand out like dogshit on the street.”

“That’s good. You got a bubble?”

“Yes, Bosch, even IAD guys have to respond to calls now and then.”

Hoffman held a clipboard and pen out to Bosch and he signed his initials next to the two pieces of crime scene evidence he was taking with him.

“Then you drive.”

They started walking across California Plaza to where the cars were parked. Bosch pulled his pager off his belt and made sure it was running properly. The battery light was still green. He hadn’t missed any pages. He looked up at the tall towers surrounding them, wondering if they could possibly interfere with a page from his wife, but then he remembered the page from Lieutenant Billets had come through earlier. He clipped the pager back to his belt and tried to think about something else.

Following Chastain’s lead they came to a beat-up maroon LTD that was at least five years old and about as impressive-looking as a Pinto. At least, Bosch thought, it isn’t painted black and white.

“It’s unlocked,” Chastain said.

Bosch went to the passenger side door and got in the car. He got his cell phone out of his briefcase and called the central dispatch center. He asked for a Department of Motor Vehicles run on Howard Elias and was given the dead man’s home address as well as his age, driving record and the plate numbers of the Porsche and Volvo registered in his and his wife’s names. Elias had been forty-six. His driving record was clean. Bosch thought that the lawyer was probably the most cautious driver in the city. The last thing Elias probably ever wanted to do was draw the attention of an LAPD patrol cop. It made driving a Porsche seem almost a waste.

“Baldwin Hills,” he said after closing the phone. “Her name is Millie.”

Chastain started the engine, then plugged the flashing emergency light – the bubble – into the lighter and put it on the dashboard. He drove the car quickly down the deserted streets toward the 10 Freeway.

Bosch was silent at first, not sure how to break the ice with Chastain. The two men were natural enemies. Chastain had investigated Bosch on two different occasions. Both times Bosch was grudgingly cleared of any wrongdoing, but only after Chastain was forced to back off. It seemed to Bosch that Chastain had a hard-on for him that felt close to a vendetta. The IAD detective seemed to take no joy in clearing a fellow cop. All he wanted was a scalp.

“I know what you are doing, Bosch,” Chastain said once they got onto the freeway and started west.

Bosch looked over at him. For the first time he considered how physically similar they were. Dark hair going gray, full mustache beneath dark brown-black eyes, a lean, almost wiry build. Almost mirror images, yet Bosch had never considered Chastain to be the kind of physical threat that Bosch knew he projected himself. Chastain carried himself differently. Bosch had always carried himself like a man afraid of being cornered, like a man who wouldn’t allow himself to be cornered.

“What? What am I doing?”

“You’re thinning us out. That way you have better control.”

He waited for Bosch to reply but only got silence.

“But eventually, if we’re going to do this thing right, you are going to have to trust us.”

After a pause, Bosch said, “I know that.”

Elias lived on Beck Street in Baldwin Hills, a small section of upper-middle-class homes south of the 10 Freeway and near La Cienega Boulevard. It was an area known as the black Beverly Hills – a neighborhood where affluent blacks moved when they did not wish to have their wealth take them out of their community. As Bosch considered this he thought that if there was anything that he could like about Elias, it was the fact that he didn’t take his money and move to Brentwood or Westwood or the real Beverly Hills. He stayed in the community from which he had risen.

With little middle-of-the-night traffic and Chastain cruising on the freeway at ninety, they got to Beck Street in less than fifteen minutes. The house was a large brick colonial with four white columns holding up a two-story portico. It had the feeling of a Southern plantation and Bosch wondered if it was some kind of statement being made by Elias.

Bosch saw no lights from behind any of the windows and the hanging light in the portico was dark as well. This didn’t sit right with him. If this was Elias’s home, why wasn’t a light left on for him?

There was a car in the circular driveway that was neither a Porsche nor a Volvo. It was an old Camaro with fresh paint and chromed wheels. To the right of the house there was a detached two-car garage but its door was closed. Chastain pulled into the drive and stopped behind the Camaro.

“Nice car,” Chastain said. “Tell you what, I wouldn’t leave a car like that out overnight. Even in a neighborhood like this. Too close to the jungle.”

He turned the car off and reached to open his door.

“Let’s wait a second here,” Bosch said.

He opened his briefcase, got out the phone and called dispatch again. He asked for a double check on the address for Elias. They had the right place. He then asked the dispatcher to run the plate on the Camaro. It came back registered to a Martin Luther King Elias, age eighteen. Bosch thanked the dispatcher and clicked off.

“We got the right place?” Chastain asked.

“Looks like it. The Camaro must be his son’s. But it doesn’t look like anyone was expecting dad to come home tonight.”

Bosch opened his door and got out, Chastain doing the same. As they approached the door Bosch saw the dull glow of a bell button. He pushed it and heard the sharp ringing of a chime inside the quiet house.

They waited and pushed the bell button two more times before the portico light came on above them and a woman’s sleepy but alarmed voice came through the door.

“What is it?”

“Mrs. Elias?” Bosch said. “We’re police. We need to talk to you.”

“Police? What for?”

“It’s about your husband, ma’am. Can we come in?”

“I need some identification before I open this door.”

Bosch took out his badge wallet and held it up but then noticed there was no peephole.

“Turn around,” the woman’s voice said. “On the column.”

Bosch and Chastain turned and saw the camera mounted on one of the columns. Bosch walked up to it and held up his badge.

“You see it?” he said loudly.

He heard the door open and turned around. A woman in a white robe with a silk scarf wrapped around her head looked out at him.

“You don’t have to yell,” she said.

“Sorry.”

She stood in the one-foot opening of the door but made no move to invite them in.

“Howard is not here. What do you want?”

“Uh, can we come in, Mrs. Elias? We want – ”

“No, you can’t come in my house. My home. No policeman has ever been in here. Howard wouldn’t have it. Neither will I. What do you want? Has something happened to Howard?”

“Uh, yes, ma’am, I’m afraid. It would really be better if we – ”

“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “You killed him! You people finally killed him!”

“Mrs. Elias,” Bosch started, wishing he had better prepared himself for the assumption he should have known the woman would make. “We need to sit down with you and – ”

Again he was cut off, but this time it was by an unintelligible, animal-like sound from deep in the woman. Its anguish was resonant. The woman bowed her head and leaned into the doorjamb. Bosch thought she might fall and made a move to grab her shoulders. The woman recoiled as if he were a monster reaching out to her.

“No! No! Don’t you touch me! You – you murderers! Killers! You killed my Howard. Howard!”

The last word was a full-throated scream that seemed to echo through the neighborhood. Bosch looked behind him, half-expecting to see the street lined with onlookers. He knew he had to contain the woman, get her inside or at least quiet. She was moving into a full-fledged wail now. Meantime, Chastain just stood there, paralyzed by the scene unfolding before him.

Bosch was about to make another attempt to touch the woman when he saw movement from behind her and a young man grabbed hold of her from behind.

“Ma! What? What is it?”

The woman turned and collapsed against the young man.

“Martin! Martin, they killed him! Your father!”

Martin Elias looked up over his mother’s head and his eyes burned right through Bosch. His mouth formed the horrible Oh of shock and pain that Bosch had seen too many times before. He suddenly realized his mistake. He should have made this call with either Edgar or Rider. Rider, probably. She would have been a calming influence. Her smooth demeanor and the color of her skin would have done more than Bosch and Chastain combined.

“Son,” Chastain said, coming out of his inertia. “We need to settle down a bit here and go inside to talk about this.”

“Don’t you call me son. I’m not your goddamn son.”

“Mr. Elias,” Bosch said forcefully. Everyone, including Chastain, looked at him. He then continued, in a calmer, softer voice. “Martin. You need to take care of your mother. We need to tell you both what has happened and to ask you a few questions. The longer we stand here cursing and yelling, the longer it will be before you can take care of your mother.”

He waited a moment. The woman turned her face back into her son’s chest and began to cry. Martin then stepped back, pulling her with him, so that there was room for Bosch and Chastain to enter.

For the next fifteen minutes Bosch and Chastain sat with the mother and son in a nicely furnished living room and detailed what was known of the crime and how the investigation would be handled. Bosch knew that to them it was like a couple of Nazis announcing they would investigate war crimes, but he also knew that it was important to go through the routine, to do his best to assure the victim’s family that the investigation would be thorough and aggressive.

“I know what you said about it being cops,” Bosch said in summation. “At the moment we don’t know that. It is too early in the investigation to know anything about a motive. We are in a gathering phase at this time. But soon we’ll move to the sifting phase and any cop who might have had even a remote reason to harm your husband will be looked at. I know there will be many in that category. You have my word that they will be looked at very closely.”

He waited. The mother and son were huddled together on a couch with a cheerful floral pattern. The son kept closing his eyes like a child hoping to ward off a punishment. He was flagging under the weight of what he had just been told. It was finally hitting home that he would not see his father again.

“Now, we know this is an awful time for you,” Bosch said softly. “We would like to put off any kind of prolonged questioning so that you have time to yourselves. But there are a few questions that would help us right now.”

He waited for an objection but none came. He continued.

“The main one is that we can’t figure out why Mr. Elias was on Angels Flight. We need to find out where he was – ”

“He was going to the apartment,” Martin said, without opening his eyes.

“What apartment?”

“He kept an apartment near the office so he could just stay over on court days or when he was busy getting ready for trial.”

“He was going to stay there tonight?”

“Right. He’d been staying there all week.”

“He had depos,” the wife said. “With the police. They were coming in after work so he was staying late at the office. Then he would just go over to the apartment.”

Bosch was silent, hoping either one of them would add something more about the arrangement but nothing else was said.

“Did he call you and tell you he was staying over?” he asked.

“Yes, he always called.”

“When was this? This last time, is what I mean.”

“Earlier today. He said he’d be working late and needed to get back into it on Saturday and Sunday. You know, preparing for the trial on Monday. He said he would try to be home on Sunday for supper.”

“So you weren’t expecting him to be home here tonight.”

“That’s right,” Millie Elias said, a note of defiance in her voice as if she had taken the tone of Bosch’s question to mean something else.

Bosch nodded as if to reassure her that he was not insinuating anything. He asked the specific address of the apartment and was told it was in a complex called The Place, just across Grand Street from the Museum of Contemporary Art. Bosch took out his notebook and wrote it down, then kept the notebook out.

“Now,” he said, “Mrs. Elias, can you remember more specifically when it was you last spoke to your husband?”

“It was right before six. That is when he calls and tells me, otherwise I have to figure out what’s for supper and how many I’m cooking for.”

“How about you, Martin? When did you last speak to your father?”

Martin opened his eyes.

“I don’t know, man. Couple days ago, at least. But what’s this got to do with anything? You know who did it. Somebody with a badge did this thing.”

Tears finally began to slide down Martin’s face. Bosch wished he could be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“If it was a cop, Martin, you have my word, we will find him. He won’t get away with it.”

“Sure,” Martin replied, without looking at Bosch. “The man gives us his word. But who the hell is the man?”

The statement made Bosch pause a moment before continuing.

“A few more questions,” he finally said. “Did Mr. Elias have an office here at home?”

“No,” the son said. “He didn’t do his work here.”

“Okay. Next question. In recent days or weeks, had he mentioned any specific threat or person who he believed wanted to harm him?”

Martin shook his head and said, “He just always said that it was the cops who would get him someday. It was the cops…”

Bosch nodded, not in agreement but in his understanding of Martin’s belief.

“One last question. There was a woman who was killed on Angels Flight. It looks like they were not together. Her name was Catalina Perez. Does that name mean anything to either of you?”

Bosch’s eyes moved from the woman’s face to her son’s. Both stared blankly and shook their heads.

“Okay then.”

He stood up.

“We will leave you alone now. But either myself or other detectives will need to speak with you again. Probably later on today.”

Neither the mother nor son reacted.

“Mrs. Elias, do you have a spare photo of your husband we could borrow?”

The woman looked up at him, her face showing confusion.

“Why do you want a picture of Howard?”

“We may need to show people in the course of the investigation.”

“Everybody already knows Howard, what he looks like.”

“Probably, ma’am, but we might need a photo in some cases. Do you – ”

“Martin,” she said, “go get me the albums out of the drawer in the den.”

Martin left the room and they waited. Bosch took a business card from his pocket and put it down on the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table.

“There’s my pager number if you need me or if there is anything else I can do. Is there a family minister you would like us to call?”

Millie Elias looked up at him again.

“Reverend Tuggins over at the AME.”

Bosch nodded but immediately wished he hadn’t made the offer. Martin came back into the room with a photo album. His mother took it and began to turn through the pages. She began to weep silently again at the sight of so many pictures of her husband. Bosch wished he had put off getting the photo until the follow-up interview. Finally, she came upon a close-up shot of Howard Elias’s face. She seemed to know it would be the best photo for the police. She carefully removed it from the plastic sleeve and handed it to Bosch.

“Will I get that back?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll see that you do.”

Bosch nodded and was about to make his way to the door. He was wondering if he could just forget about calling Reverend Tuggins.

“Where’s my husband?” the widow suddenly asked.

Bosch turned back.

“His body is at the coroner’s office, ma’am. I will give them your number and they will call you when it is time for you to make arrangements.”

“What about Reverend Tuggins? You want to use our phone?”

“Uh, no, ma’am. We’ll contact Reverend Tuggins from our car. We can see ourselves out now.”

On the way to the door, Bosch glanced at the collection of framed photographs that hung on the wall in the entrance hallway. They were photos of Howard Elias with every notable black community leader in the city as well as many other celebrities and national leaders. There he was with Jesse Jackson, with Congresswoman Maxine Waters, with Eddie Murphy. There was a shot of Elias flanked by Mayor Richard Riordan on one side and City Councilman Royal Sparks on the other. Bosch knew that Sparks had used outrage over police misconduct to forge his rise in city politics. He would miss having Elias around to keep the fire fanned, though Bosch also knew that Sparks would now use the lawyer’s murder to any advantage he could. Bosch wondered how it was that good and noble causes often seemed to bring slick opportunists to the microphones.

There were also family photos. Several depicted Elias and his wife at social functions. There were shots of Elias and his son – one of them on a boat, both holding up a black marlin and smiling. Another photo showed them at a firing range posing on either side of a paper target with several holes shot through it. The target depicted Daryl Gates, a former police chief whom Elias had sued numerous times. Bosch remembered that the targets, created by a local artist, were popular toward the end of Gates’s tumultuous stewardship of the department.

Bosch leaned forward to study the photo and see if he could identify the weapons Elias and his son held but the photo was too small.

Chastain pointed to one of the photos, which showed Elias and the chief of police at some formal affair, supposed adversaries smiling at the camera.

“They look cozy,” he whispered.

Bosch just nodded and went out through the door.

Chastain pulled the car out of the driveway and headed down out of the hills and back to the freeway. They were silent, both absorbing the misery they had just brought to a family and how they had received the blame for it.

“They always shoot the messenger,” Bosch said.

“I think I’m glad I don’t work homicide,” Chastain replied. “I can deal with cops being pissed at me. But that, that was bullshit.”

“They call it the dirty work – next-of-kin notification.”

“They ought to call it something. Fucking people. We’re trying to find out who killed the guy and they’re saying it was us. You believe that shit?”

“I didn’t take it literally, Chastain. People in that position are entitled to a little slack. They’re hurting, they say things, that’s all.”

“Yeah, you’ll see. Wait until you see that kid on the six o’clock news. I know the type. You won’t have much sympathy then. Where are we going anyway, back to the scene?”

“Go to his apartment first. You know Dellacroce’s pager number?”

“Not offhand, no. Look at your list.”

Bosch opened his notebook and looked up the pager number Dellacroce had written down. He punched the number into his phone and made the page.

“What about Tuggins?” Chastain asked. “You call him, you give him the head start on getting the south end ready to rock and roll.”

“I know. I’m thinking.”

Bosch had been thinking about that decision since the moment Millie Elias had mentioned the name Preston Tuggins. As with many minority communities, pastors carried as much weight as politicians when it came to shaping that community’s response to a social, cultural or political cause or event. In the case of Preston Tuggins, he carried even more. He headed a group of associated ministers and together they were a force, a major media-savvy force that could hold the whole community in check – or unleash it like an earthquake. Preston Tuggins had to be handled with utmost care.

Bosch dug through his pocket and pulled out the card Irving had given him earlier. He was about to call one of the numbers on it when the phone rang in his hand.

It was Dellacroce. Bosch gave him the address of Elias’s apartment at The Place and told him to draw up an additional search warrant. Dellacroce cursed because he had already wakened a judge to fax him the office search warrant. He would now have to do it again.

“Welcome to homicide,” Bosch said as he clicked off.

“What?” Chastain said.

“Nothing. Just bullshit.”

Bosch punched in Irving’s number. The deputy chief answered after one ring, giving his full name and rank. It seemed odd to Bosch that Irving seemed fully alert, as if he had not been asleep.

“Chief, it’s Bosch. You said to call if – ”

“No problem, Detective. What is it?”

“We just made notification. To Elias’s wife and son. Uh, she wanted me to call her minister.”

“I do not see the problem.”

“The minister is Preston Tuggins and I thought maybe somebody a little further up the ladder might be better making – ”

“I understand. It was good thinking. I will have it taken care of. I think perhaps the chief will want to handle that. I was just about to call him anyway. Anything else?”

“Not at this time.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

Irving hung up. Chastain asked what he said and Bosch told him.

“This case…,” Chastain said. “I have a feeling things are going to get hairy.”

“Say that again.”

Chastain was about to say something else but Bosch’s pager sounded. He checked the number. Again it wasn’t a call from home but Grace Billets’s second page. He had forgotten to call her earlier. He called now and the lieutenant answered after one ring.

“I wondered if you were going to call me back.”

“Sorry. I sort of got tied up, then I forgot.”

“So what’s going on? Irving wouldn’t tell me who was dead, just that RHD and Central couldn’t handle it.”

“Howard Elias.”

“Oh, shit… Harry… I’m sorry it’s you.”

“It’s okay. We’ll make out.”

“Everybody will be watching you. And if it’s a cop… it’s a no-win situation. Do you get any sense from Irving, does he want to go at it balls to the wall?”

“Mixed signals.”

“You can’t talk freely?”

“Right.”

“Well, I’m getting mixed signals here, too. Irving told me to take your team off the rotation but he said it would only be until Friday. Then I’m supposed to talk to him about it. Now that I know who is dead, I think the translation of that is that you have till then before he probably ships you back to Hollywood and you have to take Howard Elias back here with you and work it when you can.”

Bosch nodded but didn’t say anything. It went with the other moves Irving had made. The deputy chief had created a large team to work the case, but it looked as though he was only giving them a week to work it full-time. Maybe he hoped that the media glare would drop off to a more manageable level by then and the case could eventually disappear into the unsolved files. But Bosch thought Irving was kidding himself if he thought that.

He and Billets talked for a few minutes more before Billets finally signed off with a warning.

“Watch yourself, Harry. If a cop did this, one of those RHD guys…”

“What?”

“Just be careful.”

“I will.”

He closed the phone and looked out the windshield. They were almost to the 110 transition. They would be back at California Plaza soon.

“Your lieutenant?” Chastain asked.

“Yeah. She just wanted to know what was going on.”

“So what’s the deal with her and Rider? They still munching each other’s pie on the side?”

“It’s none of my business, Chastain. And none of yours.”

“Just asking.”

They rode in silence for a while. Bosch was annoyed by Chastain’s question. He knew it was the IAD detective’s way of reminding Bosch that he knew secrets, that he might be out of his element when it came to straight homicide investigation but he knew secrets about cops and should not be taken lightly. Bosch wished he hadn’t made the call to Billets while Chastain was in the car.

Chastain seemed to sense his misstep and broke the silence by trying some harmless banter.

“Tell me about this hard-boiled eggs caper I keep hearing people talk about,” he said.

“It was nothing. Just a case.”

“I missed the story in the paper, I guess.”

“Just a piece of luck, Chastain. Like we could use on this case.”

“Well, tell me. I want to know – especially now that we’re partnering up, Bosch. I like stories about luck. Maybe it will rub off.”

“It was just a routine call out on a suicide. Patrol called us to come out and sign off on it. Started when a mother got worried about her daughter because she hadn’t shown up at the airport up in Portland. She was supposed to fly up there for a wedding or something and never showed up. The family was left waiting at the airport. Anyway, the mother called up and asked for a drive-by check of the daughter’s apartment. A little place over on Franklin near La Brea. So a blue suit went by, got the manager to let him in and they found her. She had been dead a couple of days – since the morning she was supposed to have flown up to Portland.”

“What did she do?”

“It was made to look like she took some pills and then cut her wrists in the bathtub.”

“Patrol said suicide.”

“That’s the way it was supposed to look. There was a note. It was torn out of a notebook and it said things about life not being what she expected and about being lonely all the time and stuff. It was kind of a ramble. Very sad, actually.”

“So? How’d you figure it out?”

“Well, we were – Edgar was with me, Rider had court – we were about to close it out. We had looked around the place and found nothing really wrong – except for the note. I couldn’t find the notebook that the page had been torn out of. And that didn’t sit right. I mean, it didn’t mean she didn’t kill herself, but it was a loose end, you know? A what is wrong with this picture sort of thing.”

“Okay, so you thought somebody was in there and took the notebook?”

“Maybe. I didn’t know what to think. I told Edgar to take another look around and this time we switched and searched through things the other guy had searched the first time.”

“And you found something Edgar had missed.”

“He didn’t miss it. It just didn’t register with him. It did with me.”

“What was it already?”

“In her refrigerator there was a shelf for the eggs. You know, like little indentations that you sit the eggs in?”

“Right.”

“Well, I noticed on some of the eggs she had written a date. All the same date. It was the same day she was flying up to Portland.”

Bosch looked over at Chastain to see if there was a reaction. The IAD man had a confused look on his face. He didn’t get it.

“They were hard-boiled eggs. The ones with dates on them had been hard-boiled. I took one over to the sink and cracked it. It was hard-boiled.”

“Okay.”

He still didn’t get it.

“The date on the eggs was probably the date she had boiled them,” Bosch said. “You know, so she could tell the boiled ones from the others and she’d know how old they were. And it just hit me then. You don’t boil a bunch of eggs so they’re ready for when you want them and then go kill yourself. I mean, what’s the point?”

“So it was a hunch.”

“More than that.”

“But you just knew. Homicide.”

“It changed things. We started to look at things differently. We began a homicide investigation. It took a few days but we got it. Friends told us about some guy who was giving her trouble. Harassing her, stalking her because she turned him down on a date. We asked around the apartment and we started looking at the apartment manager.”

“Shit, I shoulda guessed it was him.”

“We talked to him and he fucked up just enough for us to convince a judge to sign a search warrant. In his place we found the notebook that the supposed suicide note had been torn from. It was like a diary where she wrote down her thoughts and things. This guy found a page where she was talking about life being bad and knew he could use it as a suicide note. We found other stuff that was hers.”

“Why’d he keep the stuff?”

“Because people are stupid, that’s why, Chastain. You want clever killers, watch TV. He kept the stuff because he never thought we’d think it wasn’t a suicide. And because he was in the notebook. She wrote about him stalking her, about how she was sort of flattered and scared of him at the same time. He probably got off on reading it. He kept it.”

“When’s the trial?”

“Couple months.”

“Sounds like a slam dunk.”

“Yeah, we’ll see. So was O.J.”

“What did he do, drug her somehow, then put her in the tub and cut her?”

“He was letting himself in her apartment when she was out. There was stuff in the diary about her thinking someone had been creeping her place. She was a runner – did three miles a day. We think that was when he liked to go in. She had prescription painkillers in the medicine cabinet – she got hurt playing racquetball a couple years before. We think he took the pills on one of his visits and dissolved them in orange juice. The next time he went in he poured it into the juice bottle in her fridge. He knew her habits, knew that after jogging she liked to sit on the steps out front, drink her juice and cool down. She may have realized she had been drugged and looked around for help. It was him who came. He took her back inside.”

“He rape her first?”

Bosch shook his head.

“He probably tried but he couldn’t get it up.”

They drove in silence for a few moments.

“You’re cool, Bosch,” Chastain said. “Nothing gets by you.”

“Yeah, I wish.”