A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 20

After the courtroom emptied, Bosch conferred with Langwiser and Kretzler about their missing witness.

“Anything yet?” Kretzler asked. “Depending on how long John Reason keeps you up there, we’re going to need her tomorrow afternoon or the next morning.”

“Nothing yet,” Bosch said. “But I’ve got something in the works. In fact, I better get going.”

“I don’t like this,” Kretzler said. “This could blow up. If she’s not coming in, there’s a reason. I’ve never been a hundred percent on her story.”

“Storey could have gotten to her,” Bosch offered.

“We need her,” Langwiser said. “It shows pattern. You have to find her.”

“I’m on it.”

He got up from the table to leave.

“Good luck, Harry,” Langwiser said. “And, by the way, so far I think you’re doing very well up there.”

Bosch nodded.

“The calm before the storm.”

On his way down the hall to the elevators Bosch was approached by one of the reporters. He didn’t know his name but he recognized him from the press seats in the courtroom.

“Detective Bosch?”

Bosch kept walking.

“Look, I’ve told everybody, I’m not commenting until the trial is over. I’m sorry. You’ll have to get -”

“No, that’s okay. I just wanted to see if you hooked up with Terry McCaleb.”

Bosch stopped and looked at the reporter.

“What do you mean?”

“Yesterday. He was looking for you here.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw him. You know Terry?”

“Yeah, I wrote a book a few years ago about the bureau. I met him then. Before he got the transplant.”

Bosch nodded and was about to move on when the reporter put out his hand.

“Jack McEvoy.”

Bosch reluctantly shook his hand. He recognized the name. Five years earlier the bureau had tracked a serial cop killer to L.A., where it was believed he was about to strike his next victim – a Hollywood homicide detective named Ed Thomas. The bureau had used information from McEvoy, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, to track the so-called Poet and Thomas’s life was never threatened. He was retired from the force now and running a bookshop down in Orange County.

“Hey, I remember you,” Bosch said. “Ed Thomas is a friend of mine.”

Both men appraised each other.

“You’re covering this thing?” Bosch asked, an obvious question.

“Yeah. For the New Times and Vanity Fair. I’m thinking about a book, too. So when it’s all over, maybe we can talk.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Unless you’re doing something with Terry on it.”

“With Terry? No, that was something else yesterday. No book.”

“Okay, then keep me in mind.”

McEvoy dug into his pocket for his wallet and then removed a business card.

“I mostly work out of my home in Laurel Canyon. Feel free to give me a call if you want.”

Bosch held the card up.

“Okay. I gotta go. See you around, I guess.”

“Yeah.”

Bosch walked over and pushed the button for an elevator. He looked at the card again while he waited and thought about Ed Thomas. He then put the card into the pocket of his suit jacket.

Before the elevator came he looked down the hallway and saw McEvoy was still in the hallway, now talking to Rudy Tafero, the defense’s investigator. Tafero was a big man and he was leaning forward, close to McEvoy, as if it was some sort of conspiratorial rendezvous. McEvoy was writing in a notebook.

The elevator opened and Bosch stepped on. He watched them until the doors closed.

Bosch took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the hill and dropped down into Hollywood ahead of the evening traffic. At Sunset he took a right and pulled to the curb a few blocks into West Hollywood. He fed the meter and went into the small, drab white office building across Sunset from a strip bar. The two-story courtyard building catered to small production companies. They were small offices with small overheads. The companies lived from movie to movie. In between there was no need for opulent offices and space.

Bosch checked his watch and saw that he was right on time. It was quarter to five and the audition was set for five. He took the stairs up to the second floor and went through a door with a sign that said NUFF SAID PRODUCTIONS. It was a three-room suite, one of the biggest in the building. Bosch had been there before and knew the layout: a waiting room with a secretary’s desk, the office of Bosch’s friend, Albert “Nuff” Said, and then a conference room. A woman behind the secretary’s desk looked up at Bosch as he stepped in.

“I’m here to see Mr. Said. My name’s Harry Bosch.”

She nodded and picked up the phone and punched a number. Bosch could hear it beep in the other room and recognized Said’s voice answering.

“It’s Harry Bosch,” the secretary said.

Bosch heard Said order her to send him in. He headed that way before she was off the phone.

“Go on in,” she said to his back.

Bosch stepped into an office that was furnished simply with a desk, two chairs, a black leather couch and a television/video console. The walls were crowded with framed one-sheet posters advertising Said’s movies and other mementos, such as the back panels of the producers’ chairs with the names of the movies printed on them. Bosch had known Said at least fifteen years, ever since the older man had hired him as a technical adviser on a movie thinly based on one of Bosch’s cases. They had kept in touch sporadically over the ensuing decade, Said usually calling Bosch when he had a technical question about a police procedure he was using in a movie. Most of Said’s productions were never seen on the silver screen. They were television and cable movies.

Albert Said stood up behind the desk and Bosch extended his hand.

“Hey, Nuff, howzit going?”

“Going fine, my friend.”

He pointed to the television.

“I watched your fine performance on Court TV today. Bravo.”

He politely clapped his hands. Bosch waved the demonstration off and looked at his watch again.

“Thanks. So are we all set here?”

“I believe so. Marjorie will have her wait for me in the conference room. You can take it from there.”

“I appreciate this, Nuff. Let me know what I can do to square it.”

“You can be in my next movie. You have a real presence, my friend. I watched the whole thing today. I taped it if you would like to see for yourself.”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ll have the time anyway. What have you got going these days?”

“Oh, you know, waiting for the light to turn green. I have a project I think is about to go with overseas financing. It is about this cop who gets sent to prison and the trauma of being stripped of his badge and his respect and everything gives him amnesia. And so there he is in prison and he can’t remember which guys he put there and which ones he didn’t. He’s in a constant fight to survive. The one convict who befriends him turns out to be a serial killer he sent there in the first place. It’s a thriller, Harry. What do you think? Steven Segal is reading the script.”

Said’s bushy black eyebrows were arched into sharp points on his forehead. He was clearly excited by the premise of the movie.

“I don’t know, Nuff,” Bosch said. “I think it’s been done before.”

“Everything’s been done before. But what do you think?”

Bosch was saved by the bell. In the silence after Said’s question they both could hear the secretary talking to someone in the next room. Then the speakerphone on Said’s desk beeped and the secretary said, “Ms. Crowe is here. She will be waiting in the conference room.”

Bosch nodded at Said.

“Thanks, Nuff,” he whispered. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll let you know if I need any help.”

He turned to the office door but then went back to the desk and put out his hand.

“I may have to split kind of fast. So I’ll say good-bye. Good luck with that project. Sounds like another winner.”

They shook hands.

“Yes, we shall see,” Said said.

Bosch left the office and crossed a small hallway and entered the conference room. There was a square, glass-topped table at center with a chair on each side. Annabelle Crowe sat in the chair on the side opposite the door. She was studying a black-and-white photograph of herself as Bosch entered. She looked up with a bright smile and perfect teeth. The smile held for a little longer than a second and then crashed off her face like a Malibu mudslide.

“What – what are you doing here?”

“Hello, Annabelle, how’ve you been?”

“This is an audition – you can’t just -”

“You’re right, this is an audition. I am auditioning you for the role of witness in a murder trial.”

The woman stood up. Her head shot and a résumé slipped off the table to the floor.

“You can’t just – what is going on here?”

“You know what is going on. You moved and left no forwarding. Your parents wouldn’t help. Your agent wouldn’t help me. The only way I could get to you was to set up an audition. Now sit down and we’re going to talk about where you’ve been and why you’re ducking the trial.”

“So there is no part?”

Bosch almost laughed. She still didn’t get it.

“No, no part.”

“And they’re not remaking Chinatown?”

This time he did laugh but quickly covered.

“One of these days they’ll get around to it. But you’re too young for the part and I’m no Jake Gittes. Sit down, please.”

Bosch started to pull out the chair opposite hers. But she refused to sit down. She looked very put out. She was a beautiful young woman with a face that often got her what she wanted. But not this time.

“I said sit down,” Bosch said sternly. “You have to understand something here, Miss Crowe. You broke the law when you did not respond to a court-issued subpoena to appear today. That means if I want, I can just place you under arrest and we can talk about this in lockup. Or the alternative is that we sit down here because they’re letting us use the nice room and talk about this in a civilized manner. Your choice, Annabelle.”

She dropped back into her chair. Her mouth was a thin, tight line. The lipstick she had carefully painted on for a casting session was already starting to crack and wear. Bosch studied her for a long moment before beginning.

“Who got to you, Annabelle?”

She looked at him sharply.

“Look,” she said, “I was scared, okay? I still am. David Storey is a powerful man. He has some scary people behind him.”

Bosch leaned across the table.

“Are you saying you were threatened by him? By them?”

“No, I am not saying that. They didn’t need to threaten me. I know the picture.”

Bosch leaned back away from her and quietly studied her. Her eyes moved everywhere around the room but to him. The traffic noise from out on Sunset filtered through the room’s one closed window. Somewhere in the building a toilet was flushed. Finally, she looked at Bosch.

“What? What do you want?”

“I want you to testify. I want you to make a stand against this guy. For what he tried to do to you. For Jody Krementz. And Alicia Lopez.”

“Who is Alicia Lopez?”

“Another one we found. She wasn’t lucky like you.”

Bosch could read the turmoil on her face. She clearly viewed testifying as some sort of danger.

“If I testify I’ll never work again. And maybe worse.”

“Who told you that?”

She didn’t answer.

“Come on, who? Did that come from them, your agent, who?”

She hesitated and then shook her head as if she couldn’t believe she was talking to him.

“I was working out at Crunch and I was on a Stairmaster and this guy got on the machine next to me. He was reading the newspaper. It was folded to the story he was reading. And I was minding my own business when suddenly he just started talking. He never looked at me. He just talked while he was looking down at the newspaper. He said the story he was reading was about the David Storey trial and how he’d hate to be a witness who went against him. He said that person would never work in this town again.”

She stopped but Bosch waited. He studied her. Her anguish in recounting the story seemed genuine. She was on the verge of tears.

“And I… I got so panicked with him right there next to me I just got off the machine and ran into the locker room. I stayed in there for an hour and even then I was scared that he might still be out there waiting for me. Watching me.”

She started crying. Bosch got up and left the room and looked into the bathroom in the hallway. There was a box of tissues. He took it back with him to the conference room and handed it to Annabelle Crowe. He sat back down.

“Where is Crunch?”

“Just down the street from here. Sunset and Crescent Heights.”

Bosch nodded. He knew where it was now. The same shopping and entertainment complex where Jody Krementz had met David Storey in a coffee shop. He wondered if there was a connection. Maybe Storey belonged to Crunch. Maybe he got a workout pal to threaten Annabelle Crowe.

“Did you get a look at the guy?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t know who he was. I never saw him before or since.”

Bosch thought about Rudy Tafero.

“Do you know who the defense team’s investigator is? A guy named Rudy Tafero? He’s tall, black hair and a nice tan. Good-looking guy?”

“I don’t know who that is but he’s not the man who was there that day. This man was short and bald. He had glasses.”

The description didn’t register with Bosch. He decided to let it go for the time being. He’d have to let Langwiser and Kretzler know about the threat. They might want to take it to Judge Houghton. They might want to have Bosch go to Crunch and start asking questions, see if he could confirm anything.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Are you going to make me testify?”

“It’s not up to me. The prosecutors will decide after I tell them your story.”

“Do you believe it?”

Bosch hesitated and then nodded.

“You still have to show up. You’re under subpoena. Be there between twelve and one tomorrow and they’ll let you know what they want to do.”

Bosch knew that they would make her testify. They wouldn’t care if the threat was real or not. They had the case to worry about. Annabelle Crowe would be sacrificed to get David Storey. A small fish to get a big fish, the name of the game.

Bosch made her empty her purse. He looked through her things and found an address and phone number written down. It was a temp apartment in Burbank. She admitted that she had put her belongings in storage and was living in the temp, waiting for the trial to be over.

“I’m going to give you a break, Annabelle, and not hold you in lockup overnight. But I found you this time and I can find you again. You don’t show up tomorrow and I’ll come looking for you. And you’ll go right to lockup at Sybil Brand, you understand that?”

She nodded her head.

“You going to be there?”

She nodded again.

“I should’ve never come to you people.”

Bosch nodded. She was right.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “You did the right thing. Now you have to live with it. That’s the funny thing about the courts. You decide to be brave and stick your neck out and they don’t let you back down from it.”