Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories

One-Dollar Jackpot

The call came in after the usual killing hours. Bosch checked the clock as he rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. It was 5:45 A.M. and that was late for a murder call.

It was Lieutenant Larry Gandle with the news.

“Harry, you and Ignacio are up. Pacific is turning over a case to us. Female, thirty-eight years of age, name of Tracey Blitzstein. She got shot to death this morning in her car. One in the head. She was parked in her own driveway.”

The name sounded slightly familiar but Bosch couldn’t immediately place it.

“Who is she and why are we getting it?”

“She’s sort of a TV star. She plays poker. Uses the name Tracey Blitz. Her husband plays, too, I’m told. So if you watch that sort of thing on cable, then you’ve probably seen her a few times. She gets profiled. They use her on the commercials. She was good-looking and apparently the best thing the female species had to offer in the arena of professional poker.”

Bosch nodded. He only watched poker on TV when he had insomnia and the World Series of Poker reruns were on ESPN. He knew it was very popular. But all that wasn’t why he knew the name Tracey Blitz. Years earlier the name came up from time to time with his ex-wife, who also played poker for a living. Eleanor Wish, his ex, had always called the world of professional poker a men’s club and maintained that no woman would ever win the World Series. She said a woman named Tracey Blitz had the skills and reads to win poker’s greatest tournament but the men would simply never allow it. They would subconsciously pool their testosterone, if needed, and gang up and eliminate her if she ever got to the final table. It was about dominance of the species, Eleanor Wish said.

Now Tracey Blitz would never get the chance to win the big one. She had been eliminated from competition in a different and more permanent manner.

Bosch asked Gandle for the location of the crime scene and was given an address in Venice on the canals.

“What else, Lieutenant?” Bosch asked. “We got any witnesses?”

“Not yet-we’re not even an hour into this. I’m told the husband was home asleep. He woke up and came out and found her in the car. He saw no suspect or getaway vehicle.”

“Where is the husband?”

“I told them to take him downtown to Parker Center.”

“Who is he? You said he’s a player, too?”

“Yeah, just not at the same level as his wife. His name is David Blitzstein.”

Bosch thought about things, his mind becoming sharper as he left sleep behind and concentrated on what he was being told.

“Is it just going to be me and Ignacio?” he asked, referring to his partner.

“You guys are lead. I’ll bring in Reggie Sauer and he can coordinate from Parker Center and baby-sit the husband till you get in there. You also have the Pacific team for as long as you need them.”

Bosch nodded. That wouldn’t be much help. Usually when divisional detectives were replaced by Homicide Special, there was resentment. It was hard to get them to hang in and help.

“You got any names from Pacific?”

“Just one.”

Gandle gave him the name and cell number of the lead Pacific Division detective who had gotten the first callout at 5:01 that morning. Bosch was impressed that decisions were made quickly and he was now on the case less than an hour into it. That was a good sign. He told the lieutenant he would be in touch as the case progressed and then hung up. He immediately called Ignacio Ferras, woke him from a sound sleep and got him moving. Ferras lived more than an hour from Venice and Bosch told him to waste no time.

He then called the Pacific detective whose name Gandle had given him. Kimber Gunn picked up the call quickly and Bosch identified himself and explained he had just been tapped to take over her case. He apologized but said he was just following orders. The transfer of the case wasn’t news to Gunn but Bosch always liked to tread lightly in such situations. He had never worked with Gunn before and she surprised him. She offered her help and said she was awaiting his direction.

“I could use the help,” Bosch responded. “I’m probably a half hour from the crime scene and my partner lives out in Diamond Bar. He’ll be even longer.”

“Diamond Bar? You might want to redirect him. He’s closer to Commerce than to Venice.”

“Commerce? Why Commerce?”

“According to the vic’s husband, she spent the night playing poker at the card casino in Commerce. He said she called when she was leaving and told him she had won big.”

“Did he say how much?”

“He said she won more than six thousand dollars cash. My partner and I, well…”

“Well, what?”

“We don’t want to jump your case but we were thinking that it looks a lot like a follow home from the casino.”

Bosch thought about that for a few seconds before responding.

“Tell you what, let me call my partner and send him that way, then I’ll get right back to you.”

He closed the phone and called Ferras, who had not left his home yet. Bosch told him what he had just learned and instructed him to drive to the casino in Commerce and begin his part of the investigation there. He then called Gunn back.

“What else did the victim’s husband say, Detective Gunn?”

“He said he fell back asleep after she called. He then woke up when she pulled into the driveway-she’s got a tricked-out Mustang with glass pipes. It makes some noise. He was lying in bed and he heard her kill the engine but then she never came inside the house. He waited a few minutes and then went out to check. He found her in the car, dead. He didn’t see anybody and didn’t see any vehicles. That was it. You can call me Kim, by the way.”

“Okay, Kim. Anybody put the husband through the box?”

“My partner. No record.”

“What about ATF?”

“We checked that, too. He owns no firearms. Neither did she.”

Bosch was holding the phone in the crook of his neck while buttoning his shirt.

“Anybody swab him?”

“You mean GSR? We figured that was a call you should make. The husband’s cooperating. We didn’t want to mess with that.”

She was right in waiting for Bosch to make the call. Conducting a gunshot residue test to determine if a person had fired a weapon had become trickier and stickier in recent years. It was in a legal gray area and choices made now by detectives would be questioned and reviewed repeatedly down the line by supervisors, reporters, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and juries.

The issue at hand was that such testing put the subject on clear notice that he was a suspect. Therefore, he should be treated as a suspect-advised of his constitutional rights and given the opportunity to seek legal counsel. This put a chilling effect on cooperation.

Additionally, a recent directive from the District Attorney’s Office concluded that GSR testing was an invasive evidence-gathering technique that should only come voluntarily or after a search warrant had been approved by a judge, another move that would clearly put an individual on notice that he was a suspect. So gone were the days when a detective could casually tell an individual of interest to submit to GSR testing as a routine part of an investigation. A GSR test was now an indisputable means of tagging someone as it.

As Gunn had explained, David Blitzstein was cooperative at the moment. It was too early in the investigation to tag him as it.

“Okay, we’ll hold that till later,” Bosch said. “Where’s your partner?”

“He’s driving Blitzstein downtown. He’ll come back after.”

“What’s his name?”

“Glenn Simmons.”

Bosch didn’t know him. So far he didn’t know anybody on the case and that was a rub. So much of the work came down to personalities and relationships. It always helped to already know people.

“Forensics at the scene yet?” he asked.

“They just rolled in. I’ll keep an eye on things till you’re here.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was now 6 A.M. and he knew his promise of being there in a half hour was a stretch. He’d have to stop on the way to get coffee.

“Better yet,” he said, “why don’t you knock on doors before we start losing people to work and school and the day. See if anybody saw or heard anything.”

He almost heard her nod over the phone.

“I’ve got a number of the neighbors already standing in the street here watching,” Gunn said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to scare up some wits.”

“Good,” Bosch said. “I’ll see you soon.”

The crime scene was already a hive of activity by the time Bosch got there. He parked half a block down the street and as he approached on foot he got his bearings. He realized that the houses on the left side of the street backed up against one of the Venice canals, while those on the right, smaller and older, did not. This resulted in the houses on the left being quite a bit more valuable than those on the right. It created an economic division on the same street. The residents on the left had money, their houses newer, bigger and in better condition than those right across the street. The house where Tracey Blitzstein had lived was one of the canal houses. As he approached the glowing lights set up by forensics around a black hardtop Mustang, a woman stepped away from the gathering and approached him. She wore navy slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. She had a badge clipped to her belt and introduced herself as Kim Gunn. Bosch handed her the extra coffee he had brought and she was almost gleeful about receiving it. She seemed very young to be a homicide detective, even in a divisional squad. This told Bosch that she was good at it or politically connected-or both.

“You’ve got to be a cop’s kid,” Bosch said.

“Why’s that?”

“I was told your full name is Kimber Gunn. Only a cop would name a kid that.”

She smiled and nodded. Kimber was the name of a company that manufactured firearms, in particular the tactical pistols used by specialty squads in law enforcement.

“You got me,” she said. “My father was in LAPD SWAT in the seventies. But I got it better than he did. His name is Tommy Gunn.”

Bosch nodded. He remembered the name from when he first came on the department and was in patrol.

“I heard of him back then. I didn’t know him, though.”

“Well, I’ve heard of you. So I guess that makes us even.”

“You’ve heard of me?”

“From my friend Kiz Rider. We go to BPO meetings together.”

Bosch nodded. Rider was his former partner, now working out of the office of the chief of police. She was also recently elected president of the Black Peace Officers Association, a group that monitored the racial equality of hiring and firing as well as promotions and demotions in the department.

“I miss working with her and I don’t say that about too many people,” Bosch said.

“Well, she says the same about you. You want to take a look at the crime scene now?”

“Yes, I do.”

They started walking toward the lights and the waiting Mustang.

“Did you get anything from the neighbors yet?” Bosch asked.

Gunn nodded.

“No shortage of witnesses,” she said. “When David Blitzstein started yelling in the street, he woke up the neighborhood. I had the best of the lot taken to the station to give formal statements.”

“Anybody hear the gun?”

“Uh-uh.”

Bosch stopped and looked at her.

“Nobody?”

“Nobody we’ve found-and that includes Blitzstein himself. I’ve been up and down the street and nobody heard a gunshot. Everybody heard the guy screaming and plenty of them looked out their windows and saw him standing in the street. Nobody heard or saw a gun. Nobody heard or saw the getaway vehicle, either.”

“You mean if there was one.”

“If there was one.”

Bosch started back toward the Mustang but then stopped again.

“What was your take on the husband?” he asked.

“Like I said, he’s been nothing but cooperative so far. You thinking the husband?”

“At the moment I’m thinking everybody. What was this guy wearing when he was in the middle of the street yelling for help?”

“Blue jeans. No shirt, no shoes.”

“Any blood on him?”

“Not that I saw.”

Bosch’s phone buzzed. It was his partner.

“Harry, I’ve been talking to the manager of the card room. He said Tracey Blitz won a lot of money last night.”

“How much is a lot?”

“She cashed in sixty-four hundred in chips.”

That jibed with what David Blitzstein had told Kimber Gunn.

“Do they have cameras in the parking lot?” Bosch asked.

“Hold on.”

Ferras put his hand over the phone and Bosch heard a muffled back-and-forth conversation. Then Ferras came back on the line.

“There are cameras,” Ferras reported. “He’s going to let me see if she was followed out of the lot.”

“Good. Let me know.”

Bosch hung up.

“That was my partner at the casino,” he told Gunn. “He confirmed she won sixty-four hundred dollars last night. He’ll check the cameras to see if she was followed when she left.”

Gunn nodded.

“Let’s go take a look at the victim,” Bosch said.

Bosch silently studied the murder scene for several minutes, trying to take in the nuances of motivation. Tracey Blitzstein had a contact wound on the left side of her head just above the ear. There was an explosive exit wound encompassing much of her upper right cheek. Her body sat behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, held in place by the seat belt and shoulder strap. She was killed before she had made a move to get out of the car.

Her small clutch purse was lying unzipped on her lap. Her head was turned slightly to the right and down, her chin on her chest. There were blood spatters and brain material on the dashboard, steering wheel and passenger seat and door. But little blood had dripped from the wounds down onto her clothes or purse. Death had come instantly, the heart getting no chance to pump blood from the wounds.

Bosch noted that the Mustang’s windows were all intact. He believed that this meant that the fatal shot had been fired through the driver’s open door. Bosch drove a Mustang himself. He knew that when the car’s transmission was placed in drive, the doors automatically locked. This meant that the shooter didn’t open the door. The victim did. She had likely stopped the car, killed the engine and then opened the door to get out before taking off the seat belt. It was when she opened the door that the killer approached, most likely from behind the car, and fired the fatal shot into her brain from a position slightly behind her. She probably never saw her killer or knew what was coming.

Bosch noticed a yellow evidence marker on the passenger-side door. There was a padded armrest with a hole in it. The yellow tags were used to mark locations of ballistic evidence. He knew that the slug that had killed Tracey Blitzstein had been stopped by the car door.

Bosch saw another yellow marker on the front hood of the car. It marked the location of a bullet casing that had been found in the crack between the hood and the car’s front right fender. It was most likely the shell ejected from the killer’s gun. Bullet casings were usually ejected from the gun’s chamber in an arc to the right rear of the weapon. This was by design because almost all automatics were manufactured for right-handed shooters and a right-rear ejection arc would take the casing away from the shooter.

But a shell could easily be redirected forward after rebounding off another object. And if a left-hander was firing the weapon, that object could be the shooter himself. Bosch was left-handed and had personal experience with this-one time a red-hot shell had hit him in the eye after being ejected during range practice. He knew that, depending on the shooter’s stance and how the weapon was held, there was a possibility in this case that the ejected shell hit the shooter and then caromed forward-perhaps to land on the front hood of the car the killer had just fired into.

Bosch nodded to himself. He had a hunch that he was looking for a left-handed gun.

“What is it?” Gunn asked.

“Nothing yet. Just a theory.”

An assistant coroner named Puneet Pram was working the scene along with a forensics team from the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. While some coroners kept up a running commentary of what they were doing and seeing at a crime scene, Pram was a very quiet worker. Bosch had been at murder scenes with him before and knew that he would not be getting a lot from him until the autopsy. Donald Dussein, the head of the forensics team, was another matter. He was a known character in the department. Known by a variety of nicknames ranging from Donald Duck to D-Squared, he was usually overly forthcoming-to the point of bending facts into theory and confusing his role at a crime scene. Bosch had worked with him as well and knew he would have to rein him in and keep him on point.

And it wasn’t long into Dussein’s initial briefing that Bosch had to do just that.

“Couple things first,” Dussein said. “The contact wound to the head. Neat and very clean. Too clean if you ask me.”

“All right, then, I’m asking you,” Bosch said. “What do you mean by ‘too clean’?”

“Well, Harry, I’ve seen a lot of these in my time. And this has the look of a hitter’s work. I’m talking about a contract killer. You have the illicit world of gambling and money in which this victim traversed and then a hit like this and it all adds-”

“Hold on a second there, Double D. How about you stick to forensics and we’ll do the detective work, okay? I need facts from you, not theories. Now, what about the contact wound is too clean for you? What are you trying to say?”

Chastened, Dussein nodded.

“The burn pattern is too small,” he said. “You see, normally, you put the muzzle up to the side of somebody’s head and pull the trigger, you get a three-to-five-inch burn in the hair and on the skin. The hot gases coming out of the barrel spread and burn. You follow?”

“We follow,” Bosch said.

“Okay, well, we’ve got no burn here. We’ve got a contact wound but we’ve got no burn. No gases and you know what that means.”

Bosch nodded. He did know. It meant that the weapon used to kill Tracey Blitzstein was likely equipped with a sound suppressor-a silencer that would have rechanneled the sound of the shot. In doing so it would have rechanneled the explosion of hot gases as well. It would have sent them backward through the baffles of the snap-on device toward the shooter, leaving the victim’s hair unburned except in the immediate area of the wound.

“It would explain why none of the witnesses heard the shot,” Bosch said.

Dussein nodded.

“What are you saying, the shooter used a silencer?” Gunn asked.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Dussein said.

He gestured toward the body.

“There is no burn. This is a contact wound with no burn. I’m telling you, the shooter used a suppressor.”

Bosch nodded. He decided it might be best to move on to the rest of the review.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk about ballistics.”

Dussein nodded, ready to move on.

“We got lucky there,” he said. “The slug impacted in the padding of the door and we recovered it in good shape. We also have the casing recovered from the front of the vehicle. A forty-caliber federal. Between the slug and the shell we will be able to match it to a weapon. You just need to find the weapon.”

Bosch nodded.

“I’m wondering how the shell ended up on the front hood,” he said.

“That’s a good question,” Dussein said. “You want to hear my theory?”

“How about I tell you mine?”

Bosch moved to the open door of the Mustang and reached in with his left hand, stopping a half foot from the victim’s head.

“I’m thinking the shooter was possibly left-handed. In this position the shell could have bounced off his body and then ricocheted forward over the roof to the front hood.”

“My theory exactly.”

Dussein beamed. Bosch just nodded.

“What about the purse?” he asked. “Can we have that yet?”

“Give me five more minutes and then it’s yours,” Dussein replied.

Bosch nodded again and stepped back away from the car. He signaled Gunn outside the grouping so they could confer privately.

“Tell me again what the witnesses said about the husband when they saw him in the street?”

“They said he was in the middle of the street, screaming for help, yelling things like call the cops and call for an ambulance. The man who lives across the street was the next on scene and checked on the victim. He saw that there was no hope and took the husband back over to his place. He was sitting on the porch with him when police arrived on scene.”

Gunn pointed across the street to the old craftsman with a porch running its entire length.

“The neighbor gave him some clothes, too,” she added. “A T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Blitzstein never went back into his own house before we shipped him downtown.”

“Okay, good. Let’s just make sure nobody goes into the house until we get a search warrant.”

He looked around the crime scene. Gunn took a step closer and spoke in a lower voice.

“You really like him for this, don’t you? The husband. I wish I knew what I was missing.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I don’t know. You’re probably not missing anything. Things just don’t seem right to me. Do you know if David Blitzstein is left-handed or right-handed?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to call my partner? He’s probably still delivering him. He could ask.”

“No, that would tip him off. Let that go for now. Until we…”

He didn’t finish. Until we what? He didn’t know yet.

“What doesn’t seem right about the scene?” Gunn said, pressing him. “Teach me something.”

“Just a feeling, that’s all. The door was locked on that car when she pulled in. I know, I have a Mustang and the doors automatically lock.”

“Okay, it was locked, but she opened it.”

Bosch shook his head.

“That’s what I don’t see. I know this kind of woman. I was married to one. Someone like her, somebody who moves in a man’s world, somebody who plays cards all night and wins big… somebody who knows the dangers that comes with all of that… I don’t see her swinging that door open before she takes off the seat belt. She wouldn’t open that door until she was ready to move.”

Gunn digested Bosch’s ramble and nodded.

“But she would open it for someone she trusted,” she said.

Bosch pointed a finger at her like a gun and nodded his head.

“Only one problem with that scenario,” she said. “Where’s the gun? I’ve got about a dozen witnesses who saw Blitzstein in the middle of the street in his blue jeans and nothing else.”

Bosch was ready for that argument.

“The gun could be anywhere. It could be in the house or the canal behind the house. It doesn’t matter because the gun and the gunshot do not set the time of the killing. The witnesses didn’t look out their windows because they heard a shot. They looked because Blitzstein was out there screaming in the street.”

Bosch saw recognition flare in Gunn’s eyes.

“You’re saying he had time to get rid of the gun because nobody knows how long it was between when she was capped with the silencer and when he went into the street and started waking up the neighborhood.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s the other thing. Him going into the street and yelling for help-like he wanted the neighbors to see him. I don’t know, if that was my wife in that car with her brains all over the place… I don’t think I’d end up in the middle of the street with no blood on me. I don’t see that at all.”

His phone buzzed and he started digging it out of his pocket.

“See if Dussein’s done with the purse,” he said. “I’ve got a guy at Parker Center waiting to go to work. I’ll get him on the search warrant for the house.”

“You got it.”

Bosch opened his phone. It was Ignacio Ferras.

“Harry, I’ve looked at all the tapes from the casino’s entrance area and the parking lot. It looks to me like she had a follower.”

Bosch felt a sudden pause. A follower would completely contradict the theory he had just spun with Gunn.

“Are you sure, Ignacio?”

“Well, nothing’s for sure but I have her on tape leaving the casino with a security escort. The guy walked her out to her car. He then stood in the lot until she pulled out. Everything was copacetic. But then in thirty-second intervals two more cars pulled out and headed in the same direction she did. Toward the freeway entrance down the block.”

“Two cars…”

“Yeah, two.”

“Okay, but aren’t cars pulling in and out of there at a regular clip? Even in the middle of the night? And probably most of the cars that leave go to the freeway, right?”

“Yeah, they do. At all hours-the casino’s open twenty-four hours. But after I saw these two cars follow her out, I went back through the tapes to trace the drivers. I found one of them came out a couple minutes before the victim. He got in his car and took a little time before pulling out. I think he was smoking. That allowed the victim to leave first.”

“Okay, and what about the second car?”

“That’s the thing, Harry. I couldn’t find anybody walking out of the casino that connects with that car. Not at first. So I had to go all the way back an hour to find the guy. He left an hour before the victim and he sat out there in his car waiting for her.”

Bosch started to pace in the street as all of this registered.

“Did you also look at the tapes from inside the casino with this guy?” he asked.

“I did. And the guy wasn’t playing, Harry. He was just watching. He was walking around, acting like he was a player but he never actually played. He was watching the tables and in the last hour he was watching her play. The victim. He zeroed in on her, then he left and waited for her in the parking lot.”

Bosch nodded slowly. He was seeing the case turning completely in a new direction. Kimber Gunn walked up to him then but he held up a finger so he could finish the call.

“Ignacio, did you get plates off the cars that left after Tracey Blitzstein?”

“Yeah, we got the plates on the tape. The first car was registered to a Douglas Pennington of Beverly Hills. The second car’s registered to a Charles Turnbull of Hollywood.”

Beverly Hills and Hollywood were on the west side, same as Venice. If Pennington and Turnbull were heading home from the casino in Commerce, they would have gone in the same direction as Tracey Blitzstein. That was explainable-at least as far as Pennington went. But Turnbull’s activity in the casino and then his waiting in the parking lot for an hour wasn’t-yet.

“And you put them through the box?” Bosch asked his partner.

“Yeah, both clean. I mean, Turnbull’s got a lot of parking and moving violations but that’s it.”

Bosch looked into Gunn’s eyes while he tried to think about what to do. Her eyebrows were raised. He could tell she sensed a change in the winds of the investigation.

“Harry, what do you want me to do?” Ferras asked.

“Head to Parker Center. I’m going to put Sauer on a search warrant for the victim’s house. Hopefully he’ll have it signed and ready to go by the time you get there. Pick it up and come out here to the scene. We’ll figure out things then.”

“What about Turnbull?”

“Give me his address. I’m going to take a run by there now.”

After he finished the call and hung up, Gunn spoke first.

“I checked the purse. The money’s gone. What’s happening?”

“You have a company car here?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a piece-of-shit cruiser from the barn at Pacific.”

“Good. You drive. I’ll tell you what’s happening on the way. Everything I just told you-that we talked about-it all just went down the tubes.”

The address Ferras had given Bosch for the home of Charles Turnbull led to a brick apartment building on Franklin. On the way there Bosch filled Gunn in on what Ferras had come up with at the casino in Commerce.

They had no background on Turnbull other than what Ferras had given them but when they got to the entrance to the apartment building, another new dimension was added. Next to the button for apartment 4B it said Turnbull Investigations. Before pushing the button, Bosch called Jim Sauer at Parker Center and asked him to run the name Charles Turnbull through the state corporations and licensing computer. A few minutes later he hung up.

“He’s held a PI license for sixteen years,” he told Gunn. “Before that he was a Santa Monica cop.”

Bosch pushed the button next to Turnbull Investigations. After getting no response he pushed it two more times, each time longer than the time before. He had opened his phone again and was asking directory assistance for a number for Turnbull when a sleepy and annoyed voice sounded from the speaker above the entrance buttons.

“Whaaat is it?”

Bosch stepped close to the speaker.

“Mr. Turnbull?”

“What? It’s eight o’clock in the morning!”

“LAPD, Mr. Turnbull. We need to speak to you.”

“About what?”

“It’s an emergency situation, sir, involving one of your clients. Can we come up?”

“Which client?”

“Can we come up?”

There was no response for five seconds and then there was a buzzing sound and the entrance door was electronically unlocked. They took the elevator up to the fourth floor and on the way Bosch unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. Gunn did the same.

“That a Kimber?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, the Ultra Carry.”

Bosch nodded. It was the same weapon he carried.

“Good gun. Never jams.”

“I hope we don’t have to find out.”

When they stepped out of the elevator, there was a man standing in the hallway in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He wore a ragged bathrobe over the ensemble, which hid much of his belt line and anything he might have hidden in it. He was in bare feet and his dark brown hair was sticking straight up on one side. He had been asleep.

“Turnbull?” Bosch asked, while using his right hand to show the man his badge.

“What’s this about?” the man asked.

“Not in the hallway. Can we come in, Mr. Turnbull?”

“Whatever.”

He pointed them toward the open door to apartment B but Bosch signaled him to go in first. Bosch wanted to keep Turnbull in front of him and in sight at all times.

“Have a seat if you can find a spot,” Turnbull said as they entered. “Coffee?”

“I could use some,” Bosch said.

“Thank you,” said Gunn.

They both remained standing. The apartment had furnishings of a contemporary design but it was cluttered with Turnbull’s work. There were files stacked on the coffee table and spread on a couch. It was clear that the living room was the nexus of his practice.

Bosch followed him to the kitchen alcove, again so he could keep a visual on him. Turnbull spoke as he filled a glass coffeepot with water.

“Which client is in the shit?” Turnbull asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You said there was an emergency. So which client is in the shit?”

Bosch decided to roll with things.

“David Blitzstein,” he said.

Turnbull was about to pour the water into the coffee brewer but paused with the glass pot held above it. He shook his head.

“Don’t know that name,” he said. “Not my client.”

“Really? You were working for him last night,” Bosch said.

Turnbull smiled.

“You’ve got your facts wrong, Detective.”

Turnbull poured the water into the brewer and set the glass pot underneath it.

“You own a weapon, Mr. Turnbull? You know I can find out with one phone call.”

“You probably already have. Yes, I own a weapon but I almost never carry it. It’s ancient. From my days with the cops. A thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson. A wheel gun. No cop would use one today.”

A revolver. No ejection of shells. It was the wrong caliber and wrong kind of gun for the Blitzstein killing.

“We’ll check to make sure. You want to show it to me?”

Turnbull leaned back against a counter in the kitchen and folded his arms in a gesture of frustration.

“Sure, I’ll show it to you, just as soon as the bank down the street opens up at nine because it’s in a safe-deposit box. Like I told you, I rarely use the thing. Now, you guys are either seriously running down the wrong alley or I am missing something right in front of my face. I don’t know any David Blitzstein. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bosch instinctively believed him. He also believed that something was wrong. They were indeed down the wrong alley. He decided to try the direct approach.

“All right, let’s stop dancing. You were at the casino in Commerce last night. Why?”

Turnbull raised his eyebrows. It was the first thing that made sense to him.

“I was working. But not for or against David Blitzstein.”

“Then let’s start with who hired you.”

“A lawyer named Robert Suggs. I do a lot of work for him. He’s a divorce lawyer.”

“All right, then, what were you doing?”

“I was watching an individual for another individual, a client of Bob Suggs.”

Bosch nodded that he understood.

“Mr. Turnbull. I think we have made a mistake here but we need to be sure. The individual you were watching, what was his name?”

“I would have to call Suggs before I could reveal that.”

“Was it Douglas Pennington of Brentwood?”

Bosch saw the tell in Turnbull’s eyes. The name was familiar to him.

“I can’t say,” Turnbull said.

“You just did,” Bosch said. “Look, I understand your position. I spent two years working a private ticket myself and I know how that is. But we’re working a homicide here. So let’s find a middle ground where you can help us and help yourself by being done with us. Let’s forget names. We’ll go with individuals. Tell us what you can about the case you were working last night.”

Coffee started dripping into the pot and its smell began to pervade the apartment. It kicked off a craving in Bosch. The charge from his first cup of the day was dead and gone.

“An individual hired my employer to begin the marital dissolution process. Only this individual’s husband doesn’t know about it yet. We’re in what we call the hunting-and-gathering stage. She tells us that she thinks her husband’s got a girlfriend on the side. Once or twice a week he stays out almost all night, telling her he’s playing poker. She’s noticed that the bank account has been dropping eight to ten grand a month with withdrawals he has made.”

“So you were tailing him last night,” Bosch said.

Turnbull nodded

“That’s correct.”

“And it turned out he actually was playing poker.”

“Correct again.”

“How much did he lose?”

“About two grand. He played at a high-stakes table and a woman cleaned him out. In a way, the wife turned out to be right. He gave his money to another woman.”

Turnbull smiled and then snapped his fingers and pointed at Bosch.

“Blitz. I heard the woman who was cleaning up at that table called Blitz. Is she the homicide?”

He turned toward a cabinet but kept his eyes on Bosch. He opened it and pulled out three cups. He set them on the counter next to the coffeemaker.

“Yeah, she’s the one,” Bosch said.

“She left at the same time as my guy and so the cameras in the parking lot gave you the idea that I was tailing her, not him.”

“Something like that.”

Turnbull hit a switch on the brewer and pulled out the glass pot. He poured three cups and asked if anybody wanted sugar or powdered cream. There were no takers.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re cops.”

Bosch drank from the cup he was given and the coffee was strong and hot, just like he wanted it. He relaxed a bit. Turnbull was a dead end as far as being a suspect but he could still be useful as a witness.

“You went out to the parking lot about an hour ahead of your subject,” he said. “How come?”

“Because I was tired of acting like I belonged in there. I had to start playing or I had to get out of there. I don’t play poker. No interest. So I went out and sat on his car.”

“See anything unusual out there?”

“No, just people coming and going.”

“What about the woman when she came out? Did you see her?”

“I saw her. My guy had already come out and he was sitting in his car smoking and trying to cool down after dropping all that money. So then she came out with a security guy. I thought that was a good move. She was probably carrying a lot of dough after the way she was playing. She was cleaning everybody out. Not just my guy.”

Bosch nodded.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I was watching because my guy was in his car and thought maybe if there was something going on, I was going to see it right there. But she got in her car and left. Then my guy left and I followed him.”

“Nothing else with her in the parking lot.”

“Not in the parking lot, no.”

“Meaning…?”

“Well, I don’t know if it means anything at all. But I was on the job once, a long, long time ago, and I know you guys want everything about everything. So I’ll give you everything. On the freeway she almost lost control of her car.”

“How so?”

“I’m not really sure but I think she was doing something, maybe she dropped something or she was reaching for something, and it made her swerve out of her lane and then back into it. She looked like she was drunk-driving but she wasn’t drunk. When I was watching her in the card room she was drinking bottled water only.”

“Was it a cell phone? Was she looking down while driving?”

“I don’t think so. Not a cell phone. I probably would have seen the light. Anyway, when she swerved I was right behind her so I lit her up with my brights to see if she was all right. I didn’t see any phone. She was sort of bent over like she had dropped something down by the bottom of the door. She sat up when I hit her with the brights. She looked back at me in the rearview and I turned them off.”

Bosch thought about this for a few minutes, wondering what Tracey Blitzstein had been doing. He then realized that maybe she had made the same mistake he had just made, mistaking Turnbull for a follower, and was hiding the money she had won under the seat as a precaution against robbery.

“Do you think she saw you leaving the casino lot?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She could have.”

“Is there a chance she could have thought you were following her? Or a chance that she thought the guy you were following was following her?”

Turnbull drank some coffee and thought over his answer before voicing it.

“If she thought anybody was following her, it would have been me. We were all going the same way but my guy got ahead of her. So if she was checking the mirrors, she would have seen me. If I had won that kind of money, I would’ve been checking my mirrors.”

Bosch nodded and thought about everything for a few moments.

“When exactly did she make that swerve between the lanes?” he then asked.

“Almost as soon as we got up on the freeway. Like I said, my guy got ahead of the both of us. So I dropped behind her and was kind of using her car to shield myself from my guy-in case he was watching the mirrors. So she easily might’ve thought I was on her instead of him.”

Turnbull poured more coffee into his cup and then offered the glass pot to Bosch and Gunn but both passed on the refill.

“I just remembered something,” Turnbull said. “Something that goes with her thinking I was following her.”

“What was it?” Bosch asked.

“About ten minutes after she did the swerve, she kind of made an evasive maneuver. At the time I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep and almost missed her exit, but now I see it. She was trying to see if she had a tail.”

“What exactly did she do?”

“We were on the ten going west, right? Well, we were coming up on La Cienega, and at the last moment she all of a sudden cut across two lanes to go down the exit.”

“You mean like she was trying to see if somebody would follow her down the ramp?”

“Yeah, like if I would make the same cut across the freeway as her. It was a good move. It would reveal a tail or lose a tail, either way.”

Bosch nodded and looked at Gunn to see if she had anything to add or ask but she remained silent.

“Did you see her again after that?” Bosch asked.

“No, not after that,” Turnbull said. “She was gone in the night.”

In more ways than one, Bosch thought. He ended the interview. He needed to get away from Turnbull to make a call.

“Mr. Turnbull, we’re sorry to have gotten you up after you worked all night,” he said. “But you’ve helped us and we appreciate it.”

Turnbull raised his hands like his efforts were minimal.

“I’m just glad I’m no longer a suspect,” Turnbull said. “Good luck catching the bad guy.”

Bosch put his empty cup on the counter.

“Thanks for the coffee, too.”

Bosch pulled his phone as soon as they were out of the building and heading back to the car. He called his partner.

“It’s me,” he said. “Are you at the scene yet?”

“Just got here. I’ve got the search warrant for the house.”

“Good. But before you go in, I want you to get with Dussein, the forensics guy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him to pull the interior of the Mustang apart if he has to but I think the missing money is still in it somewhere.”

“You mean it wasn’t a follow home?”

“I don’t know what it was yet but when she was driving home I think she thought she was being followed. I think she hid the money in the car somewhere, somewhere within reach while driving. Maybe just under the seat but I would assume Dussein already looked there.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Call me back if you get something.”

Bosch closed the phone. He didn’t speak until they were back in her car.

“I think we’re back to the husband,” he said. “What Turnbull told us reinforces the theory. If she was scared or thought she might’ve been followed, she wouldn’t have swung the door open until she was ready to make a quick move to the house. She thought it was safe.”

Gunn nodded.

“I forgot to tell you something about the purse,” she said.

“The victim’s purse? What about it?”

“She had a small can of pepper spray in it. She never took it out.”

Bosch thought about this for a moment and saw how it fit with the current theory.

“Again, if she thought she had been followed, and even if she believed she had lost the follower with her maneuver on the freeway, she wouldn’t have opened that door and left the pepper spray in her purse unless she felt safe.”

“Unless someone was there to make her feel safe.”

“Her husband. Maybe he was holding the gun in plain sight and she thought it was for her protection. She opened the door and he turned it on her.”

Gunn nodded like she believed the scenario but then she played devil’s advocate.

“But we can’t prove any of that. We don’t have anything. No gun, no motive. Even if we find the money in the car, it’s not going to matter. It doesn’t preclude a follow home and we won’t be able to charge him.”

“Then it’s an eight-by-eight case.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means it’s going to come down to what happens in that eight-by-eight room at Parker Center. We go talk to him and wait for him to make a mistake.”

“He’s a professional poker player, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

It took them half an hour to get from Hollywood to Parker Center downtown because of the morning rush hour. In the third-floor Robbery-Homicide Division office Bosch watched David Blitzstein through one-way glass for five minutes as he readied himself for the interview. Blitzstein didn’t look like a man mourning the murder of his wife. He reminded Bosch more of a caged tiger. He was pacing. There was little space for this with the table and two chairs taking up most of the interview room but Blitzstein was moving from one wall to the opposite wall, repeatedly going back and forth. Each time his pattern brought him within inches of the one-way glass-mirrored on his side-and each time that he stared into his own eyes he was also unknowingly staring into Bosch’s eyes on the other side.

“Okay,” Bosch finally said. “I’m ready.”

He handed his cell phone to Gunn.

“Keep this. If my partner calls with news, come in and say the captain’s on the phone.”

“Got it.”

They went into the detective bureau and Bosch filled two foam cups with coffee. He put four packs of sugar into one and took them both to the interview room. He entered and put the oversweetened coffee down on one side of the table in the center while he sat on the other side with the other.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Blitzstein,” he said. “Have some coffee. It’s going to be a long day for you.”

Blitzstein came over and sat down.

“Thank you,” he said. “Who are you? What’s going on with my wife?”

“My name’s Harry Bosch. I’ve been assigned as lead detective on your wife’s case. I am very sorry for your loss. I am sorry to keep you waiting but hope to get you out of here as soon as possible so that you can be with your family and begin to make arrangements for your wife.”

Blitzstein nodded his thanks. He picked up his coffee cup and sipped from it. His face soured at the taste but he didn’t complain. This was good. Bosch wanted him to keep drinking. He was hoping to push him into a sugar rush. People often mistook a sugar high for clarity of thought. Bosch knew the truth was that the rush made them take chances and they made mistakes.

Blitzstein put the cup down and Bosch noticed he had used his left hand. There was the first mistake.

“I just need to go over things once more before we get you out of here,” Bosch said.

“I told everything I know to that black girl.”

“You mean Detective Gunn? Well, that was sort of preliminary. Before I was assigned. I need to hear some things for myself. Plus we now have the advantage of having studied the crime scene and talked to the witnesses.”

Blitzstein’s eyebrows shot up momentarily and he tried to cover by bringing the cup up and gulping down more coffee. But Bosch now had one of his tells and he registered it accordingly.

“Wow, that’s hot!” he exclaimed. “You mean there are witnesses?”

“We’ll get to the witnesses in a few minutes,” Bosch said. “First I want to hear your version of events again. This way I have it directly from you instead of secondhand through Detective Gunn. This way it’s not colored by anything anybody else has said or claimed to have seen.”

“What do you mean, ‘claimed to have seen’?”

“Just a turn of phrase, Mr. Blitzstein,” Bosch said.

Blitzstein blew out his breath in exasperation and started recounting the same story he had told Gunn four hours earlier. He threw in no new details and left nothing out from his first accounting. This was unusual. True stories evolve as details are remembered and others are forgotten. A false story, one that has been rehearsed in the mind, usually remains constant. Bosch knew all of this and felt his suspicion of Blitzstein was moving onto more solid ground.

“So how soon were you to the car after the shot?”

“I don’t know because I didn’t hear it. But I don’t think it was too long. I had heard her pull in. I waited and when she didn’t come into the house, I went out to see what was wrong.”

“So if somebody said they thought you were already at the car when the shot was fired, would they be wrong?”

“What? Right at the-no way, I wasn’t right there when the shot was fired. I didn’t even see who did it. What are you trying to say?”

Bosch shook his head.

“I’m not trying to say anything. I’m trying to get as clear a picture of what happened as I can. As you can imagine, we get conflicting views. People say different things. I had a partner once who said if you put twenty people in a room and a naked man ran through it, you’d get twelve people who would say he was white, seven who would say he was black and at least one who would claim it was a woman.”

Blitzstein didn’t even smile.

“Tell you what,” Bosch said. “Why don’t you tell me your theory of what happened out there?”

Blitzstein didn’t even have to think about it.

“Simple. She was followed home. She won a lot of money and somebody from that casino followed her home and killed her for it.”

Bosch nodded like it all fit.

“How do you know that she won a lot of money?”

“Because she told me when she called me from the cage to tell me she was coming home.”

“What cage?”

“The cash cage. She was cashing in her chips and they let her use the phone because she’s a regular. She forgot her cell phone last night. She called me and said she was driving home.”

“Was she scared carrying all of that cash?”

“Not really. She won more often than she lost and knew to take precautions.”

“Did she carry a weapon?”

“No. Actually-I think she had like a little can of mace in her purse.”

Bosch nodded.

“We found that. But that’s it, just the pepper spray?”

“Far as I know.”

“Okay, then what about you? Did you play down there? Did you ever go with her?”

“I used to. But not in about a year.”

“How come?”

“I’m sort of banned from that casino. There was a misunderstanding last year.”

Bosch drank some more coffee and wondered if he should pursue this or if it was a misdirection Blitzstein was hoping he would pursue. He decided to proceed with caution.

“What was the misunderstanding?”

“It’s got nothing to do with this.”

“If it has to do with that card room in Commerce, then it does have something to do with this. If you want to help me find your wife’s killer, then you have to answer my questions and let me decide what matters and what is important. What was the misunderstanding?”

“All right, I’ll tell you if you have to know. They accused me of cheating and there’s nothing I could do to defend myself. I wasn’t cheating and it’s their interpretation against my word. End of story. They kicked me out and won’t let me back in. Banned for life.”

“But they didn’t have a problem with your wife still coming?”

Blitzstein shook his head angrily.

“Of course not. She’s a draw, man. She brings business in over there. When she’s playing, you get all these guys coming out of the woodwork to play against the girl from the world series and the ESPN commercials. They all want to kick her ass. It’s a guy thing. It’s like marking their turf, coming in her face. It’s the same with all the women on the tour.”

Bosch was silent for a moment. This was no misdirection by Blitzstein. Bosch was beginning to see at least part of the motivation for murder. Blitzstein knew that if the murder of his wife-a well-liked and well-known player-was attributed to a follow home from the casino in Commerce, then the card room would take a major public-relations hit that could impact its business and reputation. As if on cue, Blitzstein’s bile boiled up and added further to Bosch’s understanding of the crime.

“You know what?” he said. “If this thing turns out that somebody followed her home, I am going to sue their asses over there. It will be the biggest goddamn jackpot I ever rake in.”

Bosch simply nodded, hoping Blitzstein would say more. But he may have realized he had already said too much. He turned quiet and Bosch started off in a new direction.

“How would you describe your relationship with your wife?”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, were you happy with each other, was it getting boring, were you upset that she was a poker celebrity and you weren’t?”

Bosch stared pointedly at him while he said the last part. Blitzstein reacted immediately.

“We were fine. We were still in love and I didn’t give a shit about who was a celebrity and who wasn’t. You know what poker comes down to? Twenty percent skill and eighty percent luck. Some people are more skilled than others but luck is always the thing.”

Again Bosch waited a few moments to see if he would say more but he didn’t. Bosch continued.

“All right, so the card room in Commerce is off-limits. Where then do you play? The Hustler or the card room at the Hollywood track?”

“Nope, I don’t play anywhere. They’re all together on this. You get banned one place and they put your picture on the wall everyplace else. It’s fucking unconstitutional but nothing I can do anything about.”

“So you play private games?”

“When I can get them, yeah. Meantime, I was my wife’s manager.”

Bosch thought about his ex-wife and the stories she told about private games, the personal items, car keys and guns that would sometimes go into the pots.

“You ever win anything besides money at those private games?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My ex-wife is a player-you might even know her. Eleanor Wish?”

Blitzstein hesitated and then nodded.

“Yeah, I remember her. I think Tracey told me she was in Hong Kong or Macau these days. I was even thinking of heading over there to check out the casinos.”

Bosch saw an opening and went for it.

“When did you start thinking about that?”

“What?”

“Moving to Hong Kong or Macau.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, man. I said I was thinking of going over there to check it out, not move there. Why would I think of moving there?”

“Because you were banned here. Did the ban extend to Las Vegas? Maybe you were thinking of pulling up stakes.”

“Look, man, it’s none of your business. I wasn’t thinking about moving anywhere. We have a house here and I was happy. A lot of things were happening for Trace and I was managing her career. I don’t need to defend myself to you.”

Bosch raised his hands in a back-off gesture.

“You certainly don’t. Anyway, back to what I was asking about. Yes, my wife does play in Macau. She likes it. She used to tell me about these private games she played when she was over here. She said you could win anything sometimes. It was like owning a pawnshop. People would throw in jewelry, cars, guns. You ever won any stuff like that?”

Blitzstein looked at Bosch for a long moment, his eyes going through a slow burn from cold to hot.

“Fuck you, Detective Bosch. I want a lawyer.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong except for you trying to fuck me in the ass. I want a goddamn phone and I want to call a lawyer.”

Bosch leaned back in his seat.

“You know once you say that we’re done, I can’t talk to you and I can’t help you. You sure you want-”

“Help me? Yeah, help me into a prison cell for something I didn’t do. Fuck you. Get me the phone. We’re done here.”

Bosch drummed his fingers on the table for a moment and then nodded.

“All right, we’ll do it your way. I’ll go get you the phone.”

He slowly got up, giving Blitzstein a last chance to change his mind, and then left the room when he didn’t.

Gunn met him in the hallway.

“Well, you got close,” she said. “You convinced me-or rather, he convinced me-but I still don’t think we have enough to charge him.”

“Maybe not. Has my partner called?”

“Oh, shit! Your phone! Where is it? I… I think I left it out there on your desk when we got the coffee.”

They walked out to the squad room and Bosch grabbed his phone. He’d missed three calls from Ferras while he was in the interview room with Blitzstein. He quickly called back.

“Harry, where you been?”

“In an interview. You got something?”

“Jackpot, man. We got it all.”

“Tell me.”

“You were right. The driver-side door has a secret compartment. The armrest unsnaps from the door and opens up. The latch was hidden behind the speaker grille in the door.”

“What did you find?”

“We found the money, the gun, a workout shirt and gloves. It’s all there. The gun’s got a suppressor on it, too. A homemade job. There was also a bracelet in the compartment she must’ve put in there. It’s from when she won a qualifying tournament for the World Series of Poker in oh-four.”

Bosch looked at Gunn. He was annoyed. It was all information he could’ve used before Blitzstein shut things down and called for a lawyer. He turned away and went back to Ferras.

“Did you run the gun yet?”

“Yeah, just did. It’s a dead end. It was reported stolen nine months ago by the original owner in Long Beach. A gun dealer named Kermit Lodge. Said it was stolen off a table at a gun show in Pomona.”

Bosch knew it wasn’t a dead end. If they found a link between the gun’s original owner and Blitzstein, then the dead end could become an integral piece of evidence. But that was for later. He asked Ferras about the workout shirt and the gloves.

“It’s a long-sleeved plastic pullover. You know, for like sweating and losing weight.”

“And the gloves?”

“Just your basic work gloves. They look new. There’s blowback on the shirt and the gloves. The thing is, Harry, the shooter knew about the secret compartment. He shot her then dumped the gun, the shirt and the gloves in the compartment. The husband, Harry. He shot her, hid everything in the compartment and then started calling for help.”

“Yeah, now we just have to prove it. He just lawyered up.”

Ferras didn’t respond and in the silence Bosch thought of something. One last thing to attempt.

“What kind of work gloves are they? Leather, plastic, cotton?”

“Cotton.”

Bosch felt a small spark of hope. The gloves and the shirt had been worn by the killer so that he would avoid getting blowback-blood, brains and gunshot residue-on his body. But blowback came in all sizes-including microscopic-and cotton was porous.

“Okay, I want you to leave the scene,” Bosch said. “Go down to Long Beach and pick up the gun dealer. Bring him up here to RHD.”

“Pick him up for what?”

“Just tell him he reported the theft of a weapon and that we’ve recovered it and need him to come downtown to identify it. Keep him in the dark. Just get him down here.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Good.”

Bosch closed the phone.

“What did they get?” Gunn asked.

“Everything.”

He updated her on the phone call and she was immediately apologetic about forgetting about his phone. She knew he could have used the information about the secret compartment to press Blitzstein. It seemed obvious that he would have known about the compartment in his wife’s car, yet he never mentioned it when discussing the precautions she took.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bosch said. “It’s done.”

“Then what’s the next move?”

Bosch didn’t answer at first. He pulled his fold of cash out of his pocket. He had three one-dollar bills. He studied these and asked Gunn if she had any ones. She pulled out some cash and held out two ones.

Bosch chose one of Gunn’s dollars and gave her one of his in exchange. He then put the dollars in one pocket and returned his cash fold to the other.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we’ll see what kind of poker player David Blitzstein is.”

Bosch walked back into the interview room and put his cell phone down on the table in front of Blitzstein.

“There’s the phone,” he said. “But since you are calling an attorney, I need to read you your constitutional rights and make sure you have a full understanding of them. It’s procedure.”

“Then let’s get it on,” Blitzstein said. “I want to make the call.”

Bosch pulled out a business card and sat down at the interview table across from Blitzstein. The card had the rights advisory on the back side. He read it out loud, then had Blitzstein read it and sign it as well. He watched as the suspect signed it with his left hand.

Bosch pushed the phone across the table to him.

“Who you going to call?” Bosch asked.

This seemed to give Blitzstein pause.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know any criminal defense attorneys.”

Bosch looked up at the ceiling as if considering it.

“Let see… Johnnie Cochran’s dead. And Maury Swann’s in jail. There’s Dan Daly and Roger Mills. Those are good guys. There’s also Mickey Haller. I hear he’s back in business.”

“Haller. I’ve heard of him. He’s on the TV a lot, so he must be good.”

Bosch shrugged.

Blitzstein clicked a button on the phone and then punched in 411. He asked the directory assistance operator for Haller’s number. He then hung up without a thank-you and punched in Haller’s number. Someone answered and transferred him. There was a long silence before Blitzstein had the lawyer of his choice on the line. After a few minutes of short-sentence discussion he clicked off the phone.

“He’s on the way,” Blitzstein said. “He’ll get me out of here.”

“That shows a lot of confidence in somebody you’ve never met,” Bosch said.

“I have to have confidence in somebody. You people are trying to pin this on me.”

“We look for evidence and it takes us where it takes us. We aren’t looking to pin anything on anybody-unless they deserve it.”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, that’s all I’m saying. You asked for a lawyer and we can’t talk about the case anymore. Those are the rules.”

“Damn right. You can leave now.”

“Not quite. I have to stay with you until your lawyer gets here. Those are the rules, too. We’ve had a few people hurt themselves after we leave them alone. Then they try to blame us.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe I should pop myself in the eye and say you did it.”

“You try that and I’ll make sure you file the report from the hospital.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a long three minutes after that. Bosch studied Blitzstein and waited for the right moment. Finally, he began.

“You want more coffee?”

“No, it tasted like oil.”

Bosch nodded and let another thirty seconds go by.

“When did you start playing poker?”

Blitzstein shrugged.

“When I was a kid. My old man was a beer drunk who played with his drinking buddies in the garage a couple nights a week. I used to watch and he’d let me take his hand when he went to take a leak.”

“Starting early like that, you must’ve played a lot of games over the years.”

“Too many to remember.”

“I never played against my wife. Did you ever play against Tracey?”

“We tried to avoid it. Me and Trace knew each other too well. We knew the tells.”

Bosch nodded.

“I always wanted to go head-to-head against a pro,” he said. “What do you say?”

Blitzstein shook his head in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Bosch leaned forward across the table while pulling his money out of his pocket.

“You ever play liar’s poker?”

Blitzstein made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.

“Not since I was about thirteen.”

Bosch held up the bill he had traded Gunn for. He folded it in his hand so Blitzstein would be unable to read the serial number.

“Five sixes,” he said.

The object of liar’s poker was to predict the total number of specific letters or numbers in the serial numbers of all dollar bills in the game. If Blitzstein took the bait, it would be a total coming from only two bills. Five sixes was a high bid.

Blitzstein shook his head.

“I don’t play with amateurs.”

“With all those card rooms cutting you out, I would say that was all you had left to play with. Six sixes.”

“Jesus,” Blitzstein said in an exasperated tone.

“Come on, Mr. Pro. What’ve you got?”

“I’ve got an hour in this room with you and I think you’re going to drive me nuts.”

“Then I guess I win by default.”

Bosch started putting his money away. Blitzstein leaned forward.

“Just hold on, boy.”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cash. He found a dollar bill and crunched it in his fist.

“You bid six sixes? Then I call without even looking. I know you’re bluffing. You’ve got a major tell.”

“Yeah, what is that?”

“You look away at the precise moment you should stare unflinchingly at your opponent.”

“Is that right?”

Blitzstein dropped his bill on the table and Bosch did likewise. Bosch had five sixes in his serial number. He carefully opened Blitzstein’s bill and it had one six. Bosch took both bills off the table.

He held Blitzstein’s up and smiled.

“I’m going to frame this!”

He put it into his shirt pocket, shoved his winning dollar bill into his pants pocket and smiled.

“Now I can tell people I beat a poker pro.”

“Yeah, I hope it makes you happy.”

This time Bosch stared unflinchingly at his opponent. And he saw Blitzstein’s tell. A quick moment where his confidence deserted him and he wondered if he had just stepped into a trap.

“It does make me happy,” Bosch said. “Very happy.”

Bosch and Gunn walked into the forensics lab on the fourth floor and asked the counterwoman if a lab rat named Ronald Cantor was working. They were in luck. Cantor was in the lab and they were buzzed through the gate.

Cantor was an SEM jockey. His job was to analyze collected evidence with a scanning electron microscope. The normal wait time for this particular analysis ranged from four to six months. But there were unofficial ways around this. Lab rats were given morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. What they did on those breaks was up to them. It was personal time. If they wanted, for example, they could take cases out of order and put the evidence on the SEM lens. It was all about the incentives to do so.

Ronald Cantor had an ongoing incentive when it came to Bosch. Five years earlier Bosch had solved the murder of his nine-year-old niece, who had been snatched from her front yard in Laurel Canyon by a man who asked her for help finding a lost dog. Though devastated by the loss of the young girl, the Cantor family was always grateful to Bosch, primarily because not only did he solve the case but he also saved them the agony of going through a trial. During the killer’s capture, Bosch had shot the man to death in a struggle for control of Bosch’s gun. Ever since that day, Bosch was gold when it came to getting case time on the scanning electron microscope.

“Ronnie, how are you?” Bosch said as he approached.

“Doing good, Harry. This your new partner?”

“For the day, you could say. Detective Gunn, this is Ronnie Cantor, SEM expert. Have you taken your morning break yet, Ronnie?”

“No, just beginning to think about some hot chocolate, actually.”

“Well, I got a little thing here I was hoping you’d take a look at real quick. We got a guy down in one of our rooms and we need to pull the trigger on him in the next hour. Keep him or kick him loose. You could help us out while I go down and get the hot chocolate.”

Cantor swiveled on his stool away from the lab table where he was working and looked directly at Bosch.

“What have you got?” he asked.

With two fingers Bosch pulled Blitzstein’s dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and held it out.

“Shit,” Cantor said. “You’ve been carrying it in your pocket?”

“Just a couple minutes. It’s been in our suspect’s pocket and he just handled it. I’m looking for anything and everything. GSR, blood, anything. We think he killed his wife this morning but we’re having a hard time making the jump from thinking to knowing. He’s got a big-time lawyer heading our way as we speak.”

Cantor grabbed a pair of tweezers off the lab table and used them to take the dollar bill from Bosch.

“Can you do it?” Bosch urged.

“Yes, I can do it. But the prospect of contamination is very high.”

“It’s unofficial. If you find something, we’ll make the arrest and do it all over again according to protocol.”

“All right, then.”

“Good, Ronnie. I’ll go get the hot chocolate and be right back.”

Gunn offered to make the hot chocolate run but Bosch told her to stay in the lab and watch Cantor work. He said she might learn something. Going for hot chocolate wouldn’t teach her a thing.

Bosch was gone fifteen minutes, and when he came back with two black coffees and one hot chocolate, Cantor said he was finished analyzing the one-dollar bill.

He put the foam cup containing his drink off to the side and gave his report. He spoke without inflection, using the tone and words he employed when testifying in court.

“SEM analysis shows quantifiable amounts of primer, powder, projectile material and the products of their combustion. While the amounts identified in this analysis are low, I would be confident in testifying that the last person to handle this currency had recently discharged a firearm.”

Bosch felt a stab of excitement go through his chest. For a moment he visualized the scene of Tracey Blitzstein sitting dead in her car. He nodded to himself. Her killer wouldn’t get away with it.

“Thank you, Ronnie,” he said.

“I’m not finished,” Cantor said. “Further analysis reveals microscopic particles of blood in the material being examined as well.”

Bosch held up his coffee cup to Cantor.

“Cheers, man. We gotta go hook this guy up.”

Bosch and Gunn quickly left the lab. While they waited for the elevator, they talked about what needed to be done next. First, they would officially charge David Blitzstein with murder and put a no-bail hold on him. Mickey Haller would not be getting him out today. That was for sure. Second, they would seek another search warrant allowing them to use adhesive tape discs and chemically treated swabs to collect gunshot residue from the suspect’s hands and arm. They would additionally ask the judge to allow for a luminol test, which would reveal microscopic blood spatter on the suspect’s body as well.

Relief showed in their faces. They felt good about where things stood with Blitzstein. Less than four hours into the investigation they were about to make the arrest.

“That was smooth,” Gunn said. “You were smooth, Harry. Kiz Rider was right about you.”

“Yeah? What did she say?”

“She told me never to play poker with you.”

Bosch smiled. The elevator opened and they got on.