Angels Flight

Chapter 34

BOSCH had gone home to watch it all on television. He had his portable typewriter on the coffee table and was leaning over it, typing out the final reports on the investigation with two fingers. He knew he could have given it to Rider to do on her laptop and it would be done in a tenth of the time, but Bosch wanted to write this case summary himself. He had decided to write it exactly the way it had happened – everything, not protecting anyone, the Kincaid family or even himself. He would turn the final package over to Irving and if the deputy chief wanted to rewrite it, edit it or even shred it, then it was up to him. Bosch felt that as long as he told it like it was and put it down on paper there was still a small degree of integrity in that.

He stopped typing and looked at the television when the broadcast broke away from the street reports of sporadic unrest and violence to recap the day’s events. There were several outtakes from the press conference – Bosch saw himself standing against the wall behind the police chief, his face giving the lie to everything that was being said. And then the report cut to Carla Entrenkin’s press conference in the lobby of the Bradbury. She announced her immediate resignation as inspector general. She said that after she had conferred with the widow of Howard Elias it was decided and agreed upon that she would take over the law practice of the slain attorney.

“I believe that it is in this new role that I can have the most positive effect on reforming this city’s police department and rooting out the bad seeds within,” she said. “Carrying on Howard Elias’s work will be an honor as well as a challenge.”

When questioned by the reporters about the Black Warrior case, Entrenkin said that she planned to continue the case with minimal delay. She would ask the presiding judge in the morning to reschedule the start of the trial for the following Monday. By then she would be up to speed on the intricacies of the case and the strategy Howard Elias had been planning to follow. When a reporter suggested that the city would likely go out of its way to settle the case, in light of the day’s developments, Entrenkin demurred.

“Like Howard, I don’t want to settle this,” she said, looking right at the camera. “This case deserves a full airing before the public. We will go to trial.”

Great, Bosch thought, as the report ended. It won’t rain forever. If a full-blown riot is avoided now, Carla I’m thinkin’ would be sure to deliver it the following week.

The broadcast switched to a report on reaction from community leaders to the day’s events and the announcements by the chief of police. When Bosch saw the Reverend Preston Tuggins appear on the screen he picked up the remote and switched channels. He caught reports on peaceful candlelight vigils on two other channels and Councilman Royal Sparks on a third before finally finding a broadcast that showed a helicopter shot from above the intersection of Florence and Normandie. The same spot where the 1992 riots flared was packed with a large crowd of protesters. The demonstration – if it could be called that – was peaceful but Bosch knew it was only a matter of time. The rain and the dimming light of the day were not going to hold back the anger. He thought about what Carla Entrenkin had said to him on Saturday night, about anger and violence filling the void left when hope is taken away. He thought about the void that was inside himself now and wondered what he would fill it with.

He turned the sound down and went back to his report. When he was done, he rolled it out of the typewriter and put it in a file folder. He would drop it off the next morning when he got the chance. With the end of the investigation, he and his partners had been assigned to twelve-and-twelve status like everybody else in the department. They were to report in uniform at six o’clock the next morning at the South Bureau command center. They’d be spending the next few days, at a minimum, on the streets, riding the war zone in two-car, eight-cop patrols.

Bosch decided to go to the closet to check out the condition of his uniform. He hadn’t worn it in five years – since the earthquake and the last use of the department’s emergency response plan. While he was taking it out of its plastic wrap the phone rang and Bosch hurried to answer it, hoping that it might be Eleanor checking in from someplace to say she was safe and okay. He grabbed the phone off the night table and sat down on the bed. But it wasn’t Eleanor. It was Carla Entrenkin.

“You have my files,” she said.

“What?”

“The files. The Black Warrior case. I’m taking the case. I need the files back.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I just saw that on the TV.”

There was a silence then that made Bosch uncomfortable. There was something about the woman that Bosch liked, though he seemed to care so little for her cause.

“I guess that was a good move,” he finally said. “You taking his cases. You worked that out with the widow, huh?”

“I did. And no, I didn’t tell her about Howard and me. I didn’t see the need to spoil the memories she will have. She’s had it rough enough.”

“That was noble of you.”

“Detective…”

“What?”

“Nothing. I just don’t understand you sometimes.”

“Join the club.”

More silence.

“I have the files here. The whole box. I was just typing out my final report. I’ll pack it all up and try to drop it off tomorrow. But I can’t be held to it – I’m on patrol until things calm down on the South Side.”

“That will be fine.”

“Are you taking over his office, too? Is that where I should bring everything?”

“Yes. That’s the plan. That would be fine.”

Bosch nodded but he knew she couldn’t see this.

“Well,” he said. “Thanks for your help. I don’t know if Irving has said anything, but the lead to Sheehan came out of the files. One of the old cases. I guess you heard about that.”

“Actually… no. But you’re welcome, Detective Bosch. I’m curious, though. About Sheehan. He was your former partner…”

“Yes. He was.”

“Does all of this seem plausible? That he would first kill Howard and then himself? That woman on the train, too?”

“If you asked me that yesterday I would have said never in a million years. But today I feel like I couldn’t read myself let alone anybody else. We have a saying when we can’t explain things. The evidence is what it is… And we leave it at that.”

Bosch leaned back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He held the phone to his ear. After a long moment she spoke.

“But is it possible that there is another interpretation of the evidence?”

She said it slowly, concisely. She was a lawyer. She chose her words well.

“What are you saying, Inspector?”

“It’s just Carla now.”

“What are you saying, Carla? What are you asking me?”

“You have to understand, my role is different now. I am bound by attorney-client ethics. Michael Harris is now my client in a lawsuit against your employer and several of your colleagues. I have to be care – ”

“Is there something that clears him? Sheehan? Something you held back before?”

Bosch sat up and now leaned forward. He was staring wide-eyed at nothing. He was all internal, trying to remember something he could have missed. He knew Entrenkin had held back the trial strategy file. There must have been something in there.

“I can’t answer your – ”

“The strategy file,” Bosch cut in excitedly. “It was something in there that puts the lie to this. It…”

He stopped. What she was suggesting – or the suggestion he was reading in her words – did not make sense. Sheehan’s service weapon had been linked to the Angels Flight shootings. There was a ballistics match. Three bullets from the body of Howard Elias, three matches. End of argument, end of case. The evidence is what it is.

That was the hard fact he was up against, yet his gut instinct still told him Sheehan was all wrong for this, that he wouldn’t have done it. Yes, he would have gladly danced on Elias’s grave but he wouldn’t have put the lawyer in that grave. There was a big difference. And Bosch’s instincts – though abandoned in light of the facts – were that Frankie Sheehan, no matter what he had done to Michael Harris, was still too good a man at his core to have done the latter. He had killed before, but he was not a killer. Not like that.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what you know or think you know, but you’ve got to help me. I can’t – ”

“It’s there,” she said. “If you have the files, it’s there. I held something back that I was bound to hold back. But part of it was in the public files. If you look, you’ll find it. I’m not saying your partner is clear. I’m just saying there was something else here that probably should have been looked at. It wasn’t.”

“And that’s all you are going to tell me?”

“That’s all I can tell you – and even that I shouldn’t have.”

Bosch was silent for a moment. He didn’t know whether to be angry with her for not telling him specifically what she knew or just happy that she had given him the clue and the direction.

“All right,” he finally said. “If it’s here I’ll find it.”