Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories

Suicide Run

It was slow on night watch. They were submarining-cruising close to the station so at end of watch they could quickly pull into the back lot, dump the car and check out. Jerry Edgar was driving. It was his idea to submarine. He always had some place to get to, even at midnight. Harry Bosch had no place to go but an empty house.

Whatever plans Edgar had, they changed when they got the call from the watch commander and were sent to the Orchidia Apartments.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jerry Edgar muttered. “Fifteen minutes and we’d a been clear.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Harry Bosch told him. “If it checks out we’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

Edgar turned off La Brea onto Franklin and they were less than two minutes away. Bosch and Edgar were the night shift detectives in Hollywood Division, part of a new roving response team instituted by the commander. Captain LeValley wanted a detective team to roll to any crime of violence instead of pulling the patrol reports the following morning. On paper it was a good theory and Bosch and Edgar had in fact cleared two armed robberies and a rape in their first four days spent working nights. But for the most part they took reports and did little more than pass cases off to the appropriate investigators the following day.

The air they drove through was clear and crisp. They kept the windows up and their expectations down. The call was a suicide run. They needed to make a confirmation for the patrol sergeant on scene and then they’d be on their way. With any luck they’d still make it back to the station by midnight.

The Orchidia was a sprawling pink apartment complex off Orchid and nestled into the hillside behind the Magic Castle parking lot. It was an apartment complex that had been around for as long as Bosch remembered. In the old days it was a place where studios put up the new starlets just signed to contracts. These days the people who lived there paid their own way.

There were two patrol cars with flashing blues out front. A van from the Scientific Investigation Division and a station wagon from the coroner’s office were already there as well. This told Bosch that the sergeant on scene either had forgotten about the night shift detectives or didn’t think them necessary. He told Edgar to park behind the patrol car that didn’t have a light bar on the roof. That would be the sergeant’s car. Bosch would make sure he didn’t go anywhere until Bosch wanted him to.

As they got out Edgar looked over the roof of their cruiser at Bosch.

“I hate night watch in Hollywood,” he said. “All the suicides come out at night.”

It was true. This would be their third suicide in four nights.

“In Hollywood, everything comes out at night,” Bosch said.

There was a patrol officer at the entrance and he took badge numbers from Bosch and Edgar and then directed them to apartment 6. The front door of the apartment was open and they walked into a nest of activity. It was the end of shift for everybody and everybody was in a hurry. Bosch saw the watch sergeant, who turned out to be a woman named Polly Fulton, standing in a hallway that most likely led to a bedroom.

“Detectives,” she said. “Glad you could swing by. Right in here.”

“What do you mean, we just got the call,” Edgar said.

“Really?” Fulton said. “I called it in at least forty-five minutes ago. The watch must have his hands full.”

She gestured for them to pass by her and they did. The hall ended at three doors: a closet, a bathroom and a bedroom. They entered the bedroom and saw that all the activity was centered on a naked woman lying on the bed. Two coroner’s investigators, a forensics tech, a photographer and another patrol officer were all hovering around the bed.

The woman was on her back, her arms at her sides. She had been young and beautiful and remained so even in death. Her hair was blond and it wreathed her face, curving under her chin. Her skin was pale white and her breasts were full, even while she was lying down. A slight line of discoloration could be seen running along the bottom curve of each breast. Surgical scars.

There was a diamond teardrop pendant on a silver chain on her chest between her breasts. Her stomach was flat and her pubic hair was neatly trimmed short and in a perfect inverted triangle.

Edgar made a light catcall whistle between his teeth.

“Now why would she want to go and do the Marilyn Monroe?” he asked. “A girl lookin’ like that.”

No one answered. Bosch just stared at the woman on the bed while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. He knew that the knee-jerk reaction was to think that beauty solved all other problems. Same thing with money. But he had seen enough suicides to know that neither was true. Not even close.

“Lizbeth Grayson,” Sergeant Fulton said. “Twenty-four. Hasn’t been here in the City of Angels long. Still has an Oregon driver’s license in her purse.”

Fulton had come up next to Bosch and spoke while they both stared at the body. There was no embarrassment about the dead woman being naked and exposed. It was police work.

Fulton held up a clipboard. Lizbeth Grayson’s driver’s license was clipped to it. Bosch noted that she was from Portland.

“What else?” he asked.

“She’s an actress-aren’t they all. She’s got a drawer full of headshots over there. Looks like she did a walk-on bit on Seinfeld last year. You know they film that here, even though it’s supposed to be New York. Anyway, the résumé is on the back of the latest headshot. She hasn’t worked a lot-at least not the kind of jobs that she wanted to put on the résumé.”

Bosch could almost feel Fulton’s eyes drop to the small, perfect triangle of pubic hair. He knew what she was thinking. The silicone and the trim job might indicate a certain lifestyle and other means of income. Bosch looked back up at the face. Lizbeth Grayson hadn’t needed anything in life but that face. He wondered if anybody besides her mother had ever told her that.

“Anyway,” Fulton said, “on the side table we’ve got an empty bottle of Percodan left over from breast enhancement surgery last year and a ‘good-bye, cruel world’ note. It’s looking pretty cut-and-dried, Detective. We won’t be wasting your time on this.”

Bosch moved his focus to the table next to the bed and stepped over.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

On the table was an empty glass with a white residue at the bottom, a plastic pill bottle and a notepad. Nothing else. Bosch bent down to study the pill vial, which was standing up on the table. It was a painkiller prescribed to Lizbeth Grayson eight months earlier. Take as needed for the pain. He wondered if that pain included the need to end it all. He took out a notebook and wrote down the name of the physician who prescribed the drug and presumably performed the breast enhancement surgery.

He next looked at an open spiral notebook that was on the table next to the pill bottle. There were four lines written in pencil on the page.

There’s no use anymore

I give up

I give up

I give up!

He studied it for a moment, paying attention to the words that were underlined and understanding that she was putting the emphasis on a different word in each sentence. He reached down to the notebook so that he could see if there was writing on any of the other pages.

“Not yet, Detective.”

Bosch turned and saw the SID photographer standing behind him. It was Mark Baron. They had worked many crime scenes together. Baron gestured toward his camera.

“I haven’t shot any of that yet,” he said. “I don’t want it moved.”

“Okay, hold on a second.”

Bosch stooped down so he could look beneath the table. It had no drawers but there was a single shelf and it held a stack of People magazines. There was nothing on the rug beneath the table. He got down on his knees and lifted the bed skirt. There was a pair of slippers under the bed but nothing else.

Bosch got up and stepped back to let Baron get close to take his shots. He walked back to Fulton.

“Who found her?”

“The landlord. He said he got a call from her agent and then another call from her acting coach. They were worried about her. She missed a big audition or something today. The landlord has a passkey and came in. He said the coach was very convincing.”

“Was she on display like that or covered?”

“She was covered. The coroner’s people did that.”

Bosch nodded.

“Where’s the landlord?”

“He went back to his place. He lives on-site. He was looking pretty pale.”

“Get him.”

“This is pretty simple, right? We’re all going to get out of here in a few minutes, right?”

Bosch looked at Fulton. Even she wanted to turn pumpkin at midnight.

“Just get the landlord, please.”

Fulton left and Bosch went over to the bureau, where Edgar was looking through the contents of the top drawer. There were several different photos. There was a stack of 8x10 glossies that showed a collage featuring Lizbeth Grayson in varying poses and costumes. No matter what she was wearing or what the facial pose was, it was impossible to hide her beauty in character. Bosch imagined that it opened some doors but kept others closed. She would never have been taken seriously as an actress with that face.

“Man, this girl had it all going for her,” Edgar said. “Why’d she want to go and waste it all?”

“Maybe she didn’t.”

Edgar dropped the photo he was looking at back into the drawer and looked at Bosch.

“Harry, what are you seeing?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Nothing yet. I’m just saying. I’m asking the question, you know?”

“Don’t go crazy on this. You want to talk to the landlord, fine. Let’s talk to him and put this thing to bed-no pun intended.”

“All I’m saying is that you can’t come into this with a preconceived idea, you know? It’s infectious.”

Bosch sauntered over to one of the coroner’s investigators, who was putting equipment back into a toolbox. Bosch knew him, too. Nester Gonzmart.

“How’s it look, Nester?”

“Looks like we’re out of here, boss.”

“What do you have for TOD?”

“We took the liver temp. I’m going to say between midnight and four this morning.”

“So twenty-four hours tops. Any trauma?”

“Not a hangnail, man. This is a clean scene. Sometimes it’s hard to believe but it’s looking to me like what it is. We’ll get the tox in about two weeks and we’ll see the Perc on the screens. That’ll be it.”

“Make sure you get it to me.”

“You got it, Harry.”

He snapped the latches on the toolbox and headed out of the room with it. Bosch knew he would be back with the stretcher. They were going to take Lizbeth Grayson on a ride downtown.

“Everybody?” Baron said. “Can I get everybody to step back into the hall so I can get my wide shots?”

Bosch moved toward the hall, wondering where Fulton was with the landlord.

“Thank you,” Baron said.

Fulton was in the front living room with a man who was small, slight and maybe as old as the apartment building. He was introduced as Ziggy Wojciechowski. He recounted for Bosch and Edgar his finding of Lizbeth Grayson dead. It was the same story Fulton had already related.

“Was the door locked?” Bosch asked.

“Yes. I have a passkey to all the apartments. I used it.”

Bosch glanced over at the front door and saw the security chain hanging on the jamb.

“The chain wasn’t on?”

“No, no chain.”

“Did she pay her rent or did somebody pay it for her?”

It was always good to throw in a changeup, something unexpected at the interview subject.

“Uh, she paid. She always paid with a check.”

“What about boyfriends?”

“I don’t know. I don’t spy on my tenants. The Orchidia offers privacy. I don’t intrude.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“Same answer, Detective. I don’t-”

“Mr. Wojciechowski, when did you come into the apartment and find her?”

The landlord seemed a little confused by the way the questions jumped around.

“It would have been about ten fifteen. I had watched the beginning of the news on channel five-Hal Fishman. Her coach called again and I finally said I would check on her just so they would stop calling.”

“When you came in, were the lights on?”

Wojciechowski didn’t answer as he contemplated the question.

“Think about when you entered. What did you see? Could you see anything or did you have to put on the lights?”

“I could see the light at the end of the hall. Her bedroom. The light was on.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, Mr. Wojciechowski, that will be enough for now. We may have to talk later.”

He watched the little man walk out of the apartment. Edgar came up close to him then so that they could speak quietly.

“I don’t like that look in your eyes, Harry. I’ve seen it before.”

“And?”

“It tells me you’re in love. You want this to be something it’s not.”

“The chain wasn’t on the door.”

“So what? She was being considerate. She knew she was going to check out and she didn’t want anybody to have to break down the door. We’ve seen that a hundred times before, easy.”

“The lights in the bedroom were left on.”

“So?”

“People don’t leave the lights on. They want it to be like they’re going to sleep at night. They want to go easy.”

Edgar nodded his head.

“All right, I’ll give you that. But it’s not enough. It’s an anomaly. You know what that is? Something that deviates from the norm. What we have here is a deviation within the norm. It’s not something we-”

There was a sudden flash. Bosch turned to see Baron coming from the hallway into the living room. He had fired off a shot at Bosch and Edgar.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Misfire. You guys want me to shoot anything else? I’m done with Marilyn Monroe in there.”

“No,” Edgar said. “You’re clear, Mark.”

Baron, a short man with a widening middle, threw a mock salute and walked out the open front door of the apartment. Bosch looked at Edgar sharply. He didn’t like the junior member of the team making the call to break up the crime scene. Edgar read him correctly.

“Look, Harry, it is what it is. We’re done here. Let’s sign off and wait on the toxicology.”

“We’re not done. We’re just beginning. Go out there and bring Baron back. I want him to shoot everything in this place.”

Edgar blew out his breath impatiently.

“Look, partner, you may have convinced yourself of something but you haven’t convinced me or anybody else here that-”

“There’s no pencil.”

“What?”

“On the bed table. There’s no pencil to go with the note. If she wrote the note and took the pills, then where’s the pencil?”

“I don’t know, Harry. Maybe it’s in a drawer in the kitchen. What’s it matter?”

“You’re saying she writes a suicide note and gets up naked to put the pencil away in a kitchen drawer? Listen to yourself, Jerry. This scene doesn’t work and you know it. So what do you want to do about it?”

Edgar stared at Bosch for a moment and then nodded as if conceding something.

“I’ll go get the photographer back,” he said.

Bosch stared at Lizbeth Grayson on the television screen. She was tearful, beautiful and in character.

“I’ve tried with him every way I know how,” she said. “There’s no use anymore. I give up.”

“Stop it right there,” Bosch said.

Gloria Palovich paused the video. Bosch looked at her. She had been Lizbeth Grayson’s acting coach.

“When was this recorded?” he asked.

“Last week. It was for yesterday’s reading. That’s why I was concerned. She worked for almost two weeks to prepare for that audition. She got fresh headshots. She was putting everything into it. When she didn’t show up… I just knew something was wrong.”

“Did she take notes during your sessions?”

“All the time. She was a wonderful student.”

“What sort of notes?”

“Mostly on accent and delivery. How to best use dialogue to convey the inner emotions.”

Bosch nodded. He realized that Lizbeth Grayson’s suicide note was anything but a farewell. It was the opposite. It was part of a young woman’s efforts to thrive and succeed.

He looked around the acting studio. He felt uneasy, like he had missed something in the conversation. Then he remembered. The headshots he had seen in the bureau drawer in Lizbeth Grayson’s apartment were not new. He had studied the dead woman on the bed and none of the photos in the drawer showed her with the same hairstyle. They were old.

Bosch looked at the acting coach.

“You said she got new photos. Are you sure?”

Palovich nodded emphatically and pointed over Bosch’s head.

“Absolutely. She felt so good about this job that she held nothing back. She was going after it on every level.”

Bosch turned and looked at the bulletin board that ran the length of the wall behind him. It was covered with a blizzard of headshots. All of Palovich’s students, he assumed. He found the shot of Lizbeth Grayson and it was indeed a recent shot. Her blond hair curved under her chin and the easy smile.

Bosch felt himself getting angry. Someone had picked this flower just as it had been about to bloom.

He stepped over and pulled the tack holding the photo to the board. He studied the shot in his hand. There had been no copies of this photo in the apartment. He was sure of it.

“When did she get this taken, do you know?” he asked.

“Last week, I think,” Palovich replied. “She brought in the stack and gave me the first one off the top for the board.”

“There was a stack?”

“Yes, usually they come in hundred-copy stacks. You can never have too many photos. You have to have your headshots out there or you don’t get the calls.”

Bosch nodded. He had worked in Hollywood long enough to know how it worked. He turned the photo over. There was a listing of Lizbeth Grayson’s acting credits on the back. Also listed were her contact numbers through an agent named Mason Rich.

He turned it back over to look at the photo again.

“Why are the headshots you see always in black and white but everything they make these days is in color?” he asked.

“I think it’s because the black and white better shows the contrast the movie camera will pick up,” Palovich responded.

Bosch nodded, even though he didn’t understand her answer and knew nothing about contrast and photography.

The picture cut off across Grayson’s sternum. She was wearing an open-collar blouse and Bosch could see the chain around her neck. The photo cut off before showing the teardrop pendant he remembered from the night before.

He turned back to check the screen. The picture remained paused and his eyes were immediately drawn to the chain around Lizbeth Grayson’s neck. She was wearing an open shirt over a simple white tank top that said CRUNCH across it. But the pendant, which was clearly visible at the bottom of the chain, was not a diamond. It was a single pearl.

Bosch pointed to the screen.

“You see the pearl?”

“Yes, she always wore that.”

“Always?”

“Yes, it had been her grandmother’s. She believed it brought her good luck. Once in class we did some biographical sketches. She told us all about it then. In our classes we all have alter egos with alternate names. Her name was Pearl. When I called on her, if I used the name Pearl, she would respond as that alter ego. Do you understand?”

“I think so. Do you have any tapes of her as Pearl?”

“I think so. I could look.”

“I don’t know if it is significant or not. I’ll let you know. Did you ever see Lizbeth wearing a pendant with a diamond in it?”

Palovich thought for a moment and then shook her head.

“No, never.”

Bosch nodded and thanked her for her time. He asked if he could take the headshot and she said that was fine. At the door to the studio she stopped him with a question.

“You don’t think she did this to herself, do you, Detective Bosch?”

Bosch looked at her a long moment before answering. He knew he should keep his assumptions and theories to himself. But he could tell she needed the answer.

“No, I don’t.”

She shook her head. The alternate to suicide was somehow more horrible to contemplate.

“Who would do this?” she asked. “Who could do this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.”

In the crime analysis office Bosch sat with an officer named Kizmin Rider. He had worked with her before and knew she was one of the quickest cops on a computer he had ever seen. She was clearly going places in the department and he knew she was being fast-tracked for administration. But the last time they had worked together she had confided that she really wanted to be a detective.

When she was ready Bosch told her what he wanted.

“I’m looking for suicides in the last five years,” Bosch said. “Young females.”

“That’s going to be a lot.”

She worked the keyboard and went into the department’s database. In less than a minute she had it.

“Eighty-nine suicides of females between twenty and thirty.”

Bosch nodded, trying to think of ways to narrow the search.

“Do you have it by method?” he asked.

“Yes. What are you looking for?”

“Pills.”

“That would be overdose.”

She typed it in and had the answer in seconds. “Fifty-six.”

“What about by profession? I think I’m looking at actresses only.”

“That would be a catchall: entertainer.”

She typed and had the answer before Bosch took his next breath.

“Twenty-six.”

“White females?”

She typed.

“Twenty-three.”

Bosch nodded. He could think of nothing else to narrow it down to cases similar to Lizbeth Grayson’s phony suicide.

“Can you print out the names and case numbers for me?”

“No problem.”

Thirty seconds later Bosch had the list and was ready to go down to archives to pull the files.

“You need any help with that, Harry?” Rider asked.

“You mean like you might want to do some detective work?”

She smiled.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “It gets kind of boring up here looking at the computer all day.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was almost lunchtime.

“Tell you what. I’ll go pull the twenty-three files and then meet you in the cafeteria for lunch. We can look through them then. I could probably use the help because my partner thinks this is the wildest goose chase I’ve ever been on. He’s working on our backlog while I do this. And he’s losing his patience.”

She kept her smile.

“I’ll get a table and see you down there.”

Bosch opened his briefcase and pulled out the Grayson file.

“Start with this.”

In the cafeteria, Bosch put the stack of files down on a table Rider had commandeered. She had half of a tuna fish sandwich on a plate and was looking through the last few documents in the Grayson file.

“Are you sure you can do this?” he asked her.

“No problem. What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know yet. But if you read that file, you know there are inconsistencies in the Grayson case. The suicide note was a plant and a piece of jewelry is missing. A silver-chain necklace with a single pearl on it.”

Rider frowned.

“What about the autopsy?”

“That was yesterday. We’re waiting on the tox.”

“Was she raped?”

“No abrasions. No DNA recovered.”

“What do you think happened, Harry?”

“What do I think happened? I think somebody drugged her and had his way with her when she couldn’t resist. And then he let her OD. Now ask me what I can prove.”

“What can you prove?”

“Nothing. That’s why I pulled these files.”

“Looking for what?”

“Sometimes you don’t know what you are looking for until you find it,” he explained. “But I’m convinced Lizbeth Grayson was murdered with such careful planning that it wasn’t the only time this happened.”

“The guy hit before.”

Rider nodded at the stack of thin files.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bosch said. “So I am looking for anything that is a commonality between her and any of these other suicides.”

Rider frowned.

“And we’ll know it when we see it,” she said.

“Hopefully.”

They got to work. Bosch split the stack in two and they both began working through the files. When one of them finished with a file they put it on the stack for the other to read. This way they each looked at every file. Because the cases were suicides the files were thin and filled largely with autopsy and toxicological reports. All contained photos of the victims in death and most contained a photo of the victim in life as well.

Hollywood has always ground up a good share of the young women who come with their hopes and dreams. Ever since actress Peg Entwistle gave up her celluloid dreams and jumped off the H on the Hollywood sign, many others have followed suit-but in less attention-getting ways. It is the dark secret of the industry. It grinds many of the fragile ones to powder. The powder blows away.

The files contained tragically similar stories. Young women whose lives collapsed when they didn’t get the part and realized they never would get the part. Young women taken advantage of by those who could. Men mostly, but not always. Young women who were clearly fragile before even getting to Hollywood, who had come like moths to the flame, seeking to fill the empty spaces inside with long-shot fame and fortune.

But there were also files that contained only questions. Suicides without explanation, involving women who had growing credits and reason to be hopeful about their lives and careers. A few left one- or two-line notes but Bosch could not tell if these were actual suicide notes or possibly lines from auditions or parts they were playing.

Bosch studied the photos, many of which were professional headshots, and the lists of credits. He found nothing in common with Lizbeth Grayson other than that all the women had been young and hopeful. There was no shared acting school or common agent. No showcase play or work as an extra on the same movie. He didn’t see the connections and began to think that maybe Jerry Edgar was right. He was chasing something that wasn’t there.

He was on the second to the last file when Rider spoke up.

“Harry, are you finding anything?”

“No, not yet. And I’m running out of files.”

“What will you do?”

“I have to decide whether to drop it or continue on. If I continue I’ll have to work it on the side. In homicide they call it working a hobby case. You work it when you have the time. The next step is to conduct a field investigation-go out and talk to the people who knew these women, check their apartments, see if anybody has any of their belongings still. I can tell you right now my lieutenant isn’t going to let me go off and do that. I’ll have to work it like a hobby.”

“Who’s the lieutenant in Hollywood? Is that Pounds?”

“Yep. Pounds. He’s not much of an expansive thinker.”

Rider smiled and nodded.

“Look, I’m sorry I wasted your lunch break,” Bosch said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Besides, I’m not finished yet.”

She held up the five remaining files she needed to look through. He smiled and nodded. He liked her confidence. They dropped into silence and dove back into the files.

In ten minutes Bosch was finished with the files and had found nothing that would bump the case up higher than a hobby. He asked Rider if she wanted a cup of coffee but she said no. He got up to get a cup for himself. The cafeteria was thinning out and getting quiet after the lunch rush. When he got back to their table Rider was standing. Bosch thought she had finished and was about to go. But she was standing because she was excited.

“I think I found something,” she said.

Bosch put his coffee down on the table and looked at what she had. She was holding two headshot photographs. They were of two different women.

“This first one is from a case last year,” Rider said. “Her name was Nancy Crowe. Lived on Kester Avenue in Sherman Oaks. This other one is Marcie Conlon. Died five months ago. Also an overdose. Lived up in Whitley Heights.”

“Okay.”

Bosch looked at the headshots. The women had entirely different looks. Crowe had short dark hair and pale white skin. Conlon was blond and tan. Just by looking at the photos Bosch would have guessed that Crowe was a serious actress and Conlon was not. He knew that he was subscribing to a sweeping generalization so it was not something he would say out loud.

“Look,” Rider said.

She put the photos down on the table side by side.

“What’s the same?”

Bosch immediately saw what had been there all along and simply gone unnoticed in his survey of everything contained in the files. In the Crowe photo the subject was posed, looking around the corner of a brick wall. Bosch guessed that she was supposed to look mysterious, the photo showing depth of character and perhaps making up for her not being a knockout beauty. In the Conlon photo the woman was posed with her back leaning against a brick wall. Her pose was meant to be alluring, even sexually intriguing, and it counterposed the soft beauty of her features against the hard brick wall.

“The brick wall,” Bosch said.

Using her finger, Rider pointed out bricks in each photo that were the same. They were either chipped or scuffed in some way that made them unique. It was clear that both actresses had posed at the same brick wall.

“But now look,” she said.

She flipped the photos over, and below the listing of credits was the name of the photographer. The names were different but each name was followed by a matching location. Hollywood & Vine Studios.

“So you have different photographers using the same studio,” Bosch said.

He was thinking out loud, trying to take it to the next step.

“Did you look through the other files where there are headshots?” he asked.

“No, I just discovered this connection.”

“Good work.”

Bosch quickly went back to the stack of files and soon they were pulling the headshot photos out of files where they found them.

“Every actress in the city needs headshots,” Rider said as she worked. “It’s like death and taxes. You walk down Hollywood Boulevard and there are ads for photographers on every light pole.”

In five minutes they had six headshot photos of dead actresses with photo credits from six different photographers but all from Hollywood & Vine Studios. Lizbeth Grayson’s photo-the shot Bosch had borrowed from the acting coach-was one of the six.

Bosch spread the six shots out side by side and stared at them.

“Could this just be a coincidence?” Rider asked. “Maybe Hollywood and Vine Studios is a place all the photographers use.”

“Maybe,” Bosch said, continuing to stare at the photos.

“I guess we could check out wheth-”

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said excitedly.

He picked up one of the photos and looked at it closely. It was a shot of an actress named Marnie Fox. She had supposedly committed suicide by overdose six weeks earlier. He nodded and put it back down. He then went to the Grayson file.

“What?” Rider asked.

From the file he pulled one of the photos of Lizbeth Grayson in death and placed it down next to the shot of Marnie Fox. Now it was Bosch’s turn.

“What do you see that is the same?” he asked.

Rider moved in to look closely at the side-by-side photos. She got it quickly.

“The pendant. They are both wearing the same kind of pendant.”

“What if they are not duplicates?” Bosch asked. “What if they are wearing the same pendant? A diamond pendant the killer takes from one victim and then puts on his next victim. And from that victim he takes her pearl necklace and puts it-”

“On the next victim,” Rider finished.

Bosch started putting the files back into a stack he could carry.

“What’s next?” Rider asked. “Hollywood and Vine Studios?”

“You got that right.”

“I’m going with you.”

Bosch looked at her.

“You sure? Do you need to get an okay?”

“I’ll call it a long lunch.”

On the way Rider made a list of the photographers’ names and handed it to Bosch. When they got to Hollywood they parked in the lot by the Henry Fonda Theater and Bosch found a pay phone to call Jerry Edgar. He brought him up to date and his partner seemed miffed that he was working the case with an analyst, but Bosch reminded Edgar that he hadn’t been interested in Bosch’s hunch about Lizbeth Grayson. Properly cowed, Edgar said he would meet them at Hollywood & Vine Studios.

The photo studio was on the third floor of an old office building at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine. The building had been updated in recent years with each floor having been gutted and turned into lofts. This was attractive to the creative industry. Most of the listings on the building directory in the lobby were production companies, talent management offices and various other enterprises from the fringe of Hollywood. Bosch assumed that having an address that was as steeped in myth as Hollywood and Vine was a bonus to them all.

They waited ten minutes in the lobby for Edgar and then Bosch grew annoyed. Hollywood Division was less than five minutes away. He pushed the button and told Rider they weren’t waiting any longer. On the ride up they worked out how they would handle the visit to the photo studio. They stepped out of the elevator and approached a counter where there was a young man with his head down reading a script. He got to the bottom of the page before looking up at them.

Bosch badged him and asked his name. He said Louis Reineke and he spelled it for them. Bosch asked to see a photographer named Stephen Jepson and Reineke told him that Jepson wasn’t there. Bosch proceeded down the list of six photographers. None were there and none could be reached, according to Reineke. The counterman became increasingly nervous as Bosch asked about the photographers.

“So none of these photographers are here and you have no contact information for them either,” Bosch said.

“We rent space by the hour,” Reineke said. “The photographers come in, pay for an hour or whatever time they want and then they split. There is no need for numbers. Are you guys from Internal Affairs or something?”

Bosch was getting annoyed that the lead was hitting a dead end.

“We’re from homicide,” he said. “Where is the manager of the studio?”

“He’s not here. I’m the only one here.”

“All right, when was the last time any of these six men were here taking photographs?”

“I’ll have to check the books.”

He moved down the counter and opened a drawer. From it he took a large accounts book and opened it. The book appeared to list rentals of studio space by date, time and photographer. Reineke ran his finger backward over the columns and finally stopped.

“He was here last Friday,” he said. “Shot for an hour.”

“He? Which one?”

Reineke looked back down at the book.

“That would have been Stephen Jepson.”

There was something off about the conversation with Reineke. It was like they were missing each other.

“So how would that have worked?” Bosch asked. “He just came in and said he wanted some space to shoot?”

“Yeah, like that. Or he might’ve called first to make sure we weren’t booked up. Sometimes that happens.”

“Did he call?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Can we go back and look at the studio space?”

“Sure. We’re empty right now. I’ve got a three o’clock and then a four.”

They went around the counter and through a door into the loft space. There were three different photo setup areas with light stands and pull-down backgrounds. There were a few pieces of furniture to use as props. There were wires running across the ceiling and black curtains that would allow the different photo areas to be partitioned for privacy. Bosch saw the brick wall from the photos running the length of the space. He guessed that Stephen Jepson’s session on Friday had been with Lizbeth Grayson.

Bosch was staring at the wall when he remembered something that had been wrong about the conversation with Reineke. He turned and looked at the young script reader.

“Why did you ask if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke stuck out his lower lip and shook his head as he looked over at the doorway and then back to the counter.

“Did I? I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering.”

“Why would you wonder if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke did not look at him. The classic act of a liar.

“I don’t know. I was just guessing.”

“No, Louis, you were just lying. Why did you ask about IAD?”

“Look, man, I just was goofing. I was trying to think of something to ask.”

“Call the manager, Louis. Tell him he better get here for the three o’clock because you are going to the station with us. We’ll sit you down in a room for a while and when you’re finished goofing and want to tell us the truth, then we’ll talk.”

“No, man, I’ll lose my job here, man. I can’t go to the station now!”

Bosch made a move toward him.

“Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t owe the guy anything anyway.”

“What guy?”

Reineke shrugged off any further hesitation.

“The guys you asked about. They’re all one guy. He’s a cop.”

“A cop?” Bosch asked.

“I think so. He says he is. He takes photos for the police. All the crime scenes.”

“He told you this?”

“Yeah, he told me. He said that’s why he uses all the different names when he comes in. Because it’s like moonlighting and that’s not allowed. When you came in asking about all those names, I thought you were like Internal Affairs and you were onto him.”

Bosch looked over at Rider and then back at Reineke.

“Louis, call the manager. You still have to come to the station to look at photographs.”

“Ah, come on, man! I told you everything I know. I don’t even know the guy’s real name.”

“But you know his real face. Let’s go.”

Bosch took him by the arm and started to lead him toward the door to the counter. As they approached, Edgar stepped into the studio.

“About time,” Bosch said.

“Where’s the crime scene?” Edgar said.

“There is no crime scene,” Bosch said. “We’re taking Louis here back to the station to look at photos.”

“That’s weird.”

“What is?”

“I just passed Mark Baron, the crime scene guy, coming out of the elevator. He was in a hurry. I thought he was going to get his camera.”

They found police photographer Mark Baron in his apartment in West Hollywood. The door was unlocked and open two inches. Bosch called his name and then entered. Edgar and Rider were with him.

After overhearing Reineke tell Bosch and Edgar about the police photographer who used phony names to take Hollywood headshots of young women, Baron had rushed home, gone into the bedroom and gotten the gun he kept in a shoebox under his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put the muzzle into the fleshy spot under his chin. He pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.

Bosch didn’t look too long at the body of the dead photographer. Instead his eyes were drawn to the walls of the bedroom. Three of the four were covered floor to ceiling with collages of crime scene photos. All were of dead women. Next to each photo of death was a photo of life. The same woman alive and posing for him.

“Oh my God,” Rider murmured. “How long was he doing this?”

Bosch scanned the room and all of the photos of all of the different women. He didn’t want to guess.

“I better call this in to the captain,” Edgar said.

He left the room. Bosch continued to look. Finally, he found the headshot photo of Lizbeth Grayson on the wall. A photo of her lying dead on the bed was taped to the wall next to it.

Bosch wondered which of the photos Baron had prized the most. Dead or alive?

“I better call my office and tell them where I’m at,” Rider said.

Bosch nodded his approval. She left the room then and only Bosch remained.

“Do you still want to be a detective?” he asked, though he knew she was gone.