Lost Light

18

Paranoia is not always a bad thing. It can help you keep an edge and sometimes an edge is the difference. From the library I headed over to Broadway and then toward the Civic Center. It might seem normal enough, an ex-cop heading toward the police department. Nothing unusual about that. But as I got to the Los Angeles Times complex I yanked the wheel hard left without using the brakes or a turn signal and sliced through oncoming traffic into the Third Street tunnel. I pinned the accelerator and the Mercedes responded, the front end rising like a boat as it picked up speed and roared through the three-block tunnel.

As often as I could I checked the rearview mirror for a follower. The tiles on the rounded walls of the tunnel carried headlights like halos. Filmmakers rent it from the city all the time for that reason. Any car trying to keep pace with me would be advertising, unless the lights were turned off, and that would be just as obvious in the mirror.

I was smiling. I’m not sure why. Having a possible FBI tail isn’t necessarily something to be happy about. And the FBI is generally humorless about it as well. But I felt all at once that I had made the right move with the Mercedes. The car was flying. I was up high-higher than in any police car I had ever been in-so I had a good view in the mirror. It was as if I had planned for this and the plan was working. And that brought the smile.

As I came out of the tunnel I hit the brakes and took a hard right. The thick tires held the pavement, and when I was clear of the mouth of the tunnel I stopped completely. I waited, my eyes on the mirror. Of the cars that came out of the tunnel none turned right behind me and none even braked as they went through the intersection. If I had a tail I had either lost it or the follower was proficient enough at the game to be willing to lose the target in order to avoid obvious exposure. The latter didn’t fit with the way Parenting Today had been so obvious in the library.

The third possibility I had to now consider was electronic surveillance. The bureau could have easily tricked my car at almost any point during the day. In the garage at the library a tech could have slid under and wired it. The same tech could have been waiting for me to show up at the federal building as well. This of course would mean that they already knew of my ride about town with Roy Lindell. I was tempted to call the agent and warn him but decided that I shouldn’t use my cell phone to contact him.

I shook my head. Maybe paranoia was not such a good thing after all. It can help you keep an edge but it can also paralyze you. I pulled back into traffic and worked my way over to the Hollywood Freeway. I kept my eyes off the rear view as much as possible.

The freeway is elevated as it cuts through Hollywood and into the Cahuenga Pass. It offers a good view of the place where I spent the most significant part of my time as a cop. With just glancing looks I could pick out some of the buildings where I had worked cases. The Capitol Records building, designed to resemble a stack of records. The Usher Hotel, now being renovated as luxury apartments as part of the Hollywood core-area redesign and development. I could see the lighted homes rising up on the dark hillsides in Beechwood Canyon and Whitley Heights. I could see the ten-story image of a local basketball legend on the side of an otherwise nondescript office building. Smaller in stature but still covering the side of a building was a Marlboro Man with a drooping cigarette in his mouth, his steely coolness replaced by a symbol of impotence.

Hollywood was always best viewed at night. It could only hold its mystique in darkness. In sunlight the curtain comes up and the intrigue is gone, replaced by a sense of hidden danger. It was a place of takers and users, of broken sidewalks and dreams. You build a city in the desert, water it with false hopes and false idols, and eventually this is what happens. The desert reclaims it, turns it arid, leaves it barren. Human tumbleweeds drift across its streets, predators hide in the rocks.

I took the Mulholland exit and crossed over the freeway, then at the split took Woodrow Wilson on up the side of the mountain. My house was dark. The only light I saw when I came through the carport door was the red glow from the answering machine on the kitchen counter. I hit a light switch and then pushed the PLAYBACK button on the phone.

There were two messages. The first was from Kiz Rider and she had already told me about that. The second was from Lawton Cross. He had held back on me once again. He said he had something, his voice croaking into the phone like static. I pictured his wife holding the phone to his mouth.

The message had been left two hours before. It was getting late but I called back. The man lived in a chair. What was late to him? I had no idea.

Danny Cross answered. She must have had caller ID on the phone because her hello was clipped and carried an edge of malice in it. Or was I reading too much into it?

“Danny, it’s Harry. I’m returning your husband’s call.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Can you wake him, please? It sounded important.”

“I can tell you what he wanted to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“He wanted to tell you that when he was working he used to keep copies of his active files. He kept them here in the home office.”

I didn’t recall seeing an office in the house.

“Full copies?”

“I don’t know. He had a filing cabinet and it was full.”

“Had?”

“His sitting room is where the office was. I had to move everything out. It’s all in the garage now.”

I realized I needed to stop the flow of information from her. Too much had already been said on the phone. Paranoia was raising its ugly head again.

“I’m coming out tonight,” I said.

“No, it’s too late. I’m going to bed soon.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour, Danny. Wait up for me.”

I hung the phone up before she could further dispute my intentions. Without having gone further into the house than the kitchen I turned and left, this time leaving the light on.

A light rain had begun to fall in the Valley. Oil beaded on the freeway and slowed everybody down. I used all of the half hour and more to get to the house on Melba and shortly after I pulled into the driveway the garage door started to go up. Danny Cross had been watching for me. I got out of the Mercedes and entered the garage.

It was a two-car garage and it was cluttered with stacked boxes and furniture. There was an old Chevy Malibu with its hood sprung like somebody had been working on the engine and had just lowered the lid without latching it while taking a break. I think I remembered something about Lawton Cross driving a ’60s muscle car as a private vehicle. But there was a thick layer of dust on the car and boxes stacked on its roof. One thing for sure was that he was never going to work on it or drive it again.

A door that connected to the house opened and Danny stood there in a long bathrobe with a belt knotted tightly around her thin waist. She had the same look of disapproval she always had on her face and that I had become quite used to. It was too bad. She was a beautiful woman. Or had been, at least.

“Danny,” I said, nodding. “I won’t be long. If you can just point me in -”

“It’s all over there next to the washing machine. The file cabinets.”

She pointed to a spot in front of the Malibu where there was a laundry alcove. I walked around the car and found two double-drawer file cabinets standing next to the stacked washer and dryer. They were key-lock cabinets but the locks had been punched out on each. Lawton had probably picked them up used at a yard sale.

There was no exterior labeling on the four drawers that could help me with my search so I bent down and opened the first drawer on the left. It contained no files. Rather, it held what looked like the contents of a top of a desk. There was a Rolodex file, its phone cards yellowed, a stand-up photo frame featuring Danny and Lawton Cross at some happier moment, and double-decked in and out trays. The only thing in the tray marked “IN” was a folded map of Griffith Park.

The next drawer contained Cross’s files. I thumbed through the tabs looking at the names and hoping for connections to what I was working. Nothing. I went to the top drawer of the second cabinet and found more files. Finally, I found a file marked “Eidolon Productions.” I pulled it and put it on top of the cabinet. I went back to thumbing through the files, knowing that often cases expanded into many folders.

I came across a file marked “Antonio Markwell” and remembered the case because it had played hotly in the media about five or six years earlier. Markwell was a nine-year-old boy who disappeared from his backyard in Chatsworth. RHD worked the case with the FBI. It lasted a week, until they found a suspect-a pedophile with a motor home. He led Lawton Cross and his partner, Jack Dorsey, to the boy’s body in Griffith Park. It had been buried up near the caves in Bronson Canyon. They would have never found it if they hadn’t turned the killer. There were too many places to hide a body in those hills.

It had been a big case, the kind that made your name in the department. I imagined that both Cross and Dorsey thought that they were golden after that. They had no idea what the future was holding for them.

I closed the drawer. There were no other files that seemed connected to my investigation. The bottom drawer, the last one, was empty. I took the file I had pulled over to the Malibu. I put the file down on the hood and opened it. I should have just put it under my arm and left with it. But I was excited. I was anticipating something. A new lead maybe, a break. I wanted to see what Lawton Cross had kept in the file.

As soon as I opened it I knew the file was incomplete. Cross had copied some of the working documents of the case for use at home or on the road. The basic case reports were missing. There were no reports that specifically related to the investigation of the murder of Angella Benton. The file mostly contained reports relating to the movie set robbery and shoot-out. There were witness reports-including my own-and forensic reports. There was a DNA comparison between the blood found in the stolen movie van and the semen found on Angella Benton’s body; no match. There were interview summaries and a time and location spread sheet-a document on which the locations of various players in the case are charted at different times important to the case. These T amp;L reports were also known as alibi sheets. It was a way of sifting through multiple players in a case and possibly coming up with a suspect.

I quickly went through the pages of this report and determined that Cross and Dorsey had been charting eleven different people and not all of the names were familiar to me. The T amp;L report was a good find. I put the document to the side because I would put it at the top of the stack in the file when I was finished my review.

I moved on and had just picked up a copy of the currency report, which contained the serial numbers taken at random from the stolen money, when I heard Danny’s voice behind me. She had remained in the doorway to the house watching me and I hadn’t realized it.

“Find what you were looking for?”

I turned and looked back at her. The first thing I noticed was that the belt of her robe was untied and the robe had fallen open to reveal the light blue nightgown beneath.

“Uh, yes, it’s here. I was just taking a quick look. I can go now if you want.”

“What’s your hurry? Lawton is still asleep. He won’t wake up until the morning.”

She held my eyes as she said the last line. I was trying to read what was said and what was meant. Before I could respond, the moment was broken by the sound and the lights of a car pulling quickly into the driveway.

I turned and saw a standard government car-a Crown Victoria-pulling into the light from the open garage. Two men were in the car and I recognized the one in the passenger seat. With as little noticeable movement as I could manage I lowered the currency report onto the T amp;L report. I then picked them both up and slid them into the crack between the Malibu ’s hood and fender. I heard the pages fall through the slot into the engine compartment. I then stepped back from the car, leaving the rest of the file open on the hood, and around into the open bay of the garage.

A second Crown Vic pulled into the driveway. The two men from the first car were already out and entering the garage.

“FBI,” said the man I recognized as Parenting Today.

He held up an ID case with a badge affixed to it. He just as quickly closed it and put it away.

“How are the kids?” I asked.

He seemed confused for a moment and it put a pause in his step. But then he pressed on and took a position in front of me while his partner, who had not shown a badge, stood a few feet to my right.

“Mr. Bosch, we are going to need you to come with us,” said Parenting Today.

“Well, I’m kind of busy at the moment. I’m trying to get this garage in shape.”

The agent looked over my shoulder at Danny Cross.

“Ma’am, could you return inside and close the door? We’ll be out of your hair in a few moments.”

“This is my garage, my house,” Danny responded.

I knew her protest was useless but I liked that she’d made it just the same.

“Ma’am, this is FBI business. It does not concern you. Please step inside.”

“If it is in my garage it concerns me.”

“Ma’am, I won’t ask you again.”

There was a pause. I kept my eyes on the agent. I heard the door close behind me and knew my witness was gone. In the same moment the agent to my right made his move. He raised both hands and charged me, pushing me into the side of the Malibu. My elbow slid across the roof and hit a box, sending it over the other side of the car and crashing to the floor. It sounded like it had glassware in it.

The agent was well practiced and I offered no resistance. I knew that would be a mistake. That would be what he wanted. He roughly pushed my chest against the car and pulled my arms behind my back. I felt the handcuffs cinch tightly around my wrists, then his hands patted me down for weapons and invaded my pockets in a routine search.

“What are you doing? What is going on?”

It was Danny. She had heard the crash.

“Ma’am,” Parenting Today said sternly, “go back inside and close the door.”

The other agent twirled me away from the car and pushed me out of the garage toward the second car. I looked back at Danny Cross just as she was closing the door. The look of disapproval I was so used to was gone. There was a look of concern on her face now. I also saw that her bathrobe had been retied.

The silent agent opened the back door of the second car and started pushing me in.

“Watch your head,” he said just as he put his hand on my neck and pushed my head sharply into the door frame. I went sprawling across the backseat. He slammed the door, narrowly missing my ankle with it. I could almost hear a groan of disappointment from him through the glass.

He knocked his fist on the roof of the car and the driver dropped the transmission into reverse and hit the gas. The car jerked backwards and the sudden motion threw me off the seat onto the floor. I was unable to break my fall and the side of my face hit hard on the sticky floor. With my hands behind me I struggled to push myself back onto the seat. But I did it quickly, my struggle fueled by my anger and embarrassment. I sat up as the car jerked forward and I was thrown back into the seat. The car sped away from the house and through the rear window I saw Parenting Today standing in the garage and staring back at me. He held Lawton Cross’s file down at his side.

I breathed heavily and watched the agent grow small in the window. I could feel crud from the floor mat on my face and could do nothing about it. My face burned. Not with pain and no longer with anger and embarrassment. It was pure helplessness that burned me now.