The Black Box

17

Detective Nancy Mendenhall was a small woman with a sincere if not disarming smile. She didn’t look the least bit threatening, which immediately put Bosch on guard. Not that he wasn’t alert and ready for anything when he and Rick Jackson entered the Bradbury Building for Harry’s scheduled interview. His long history of fending off internal investigators dictated that he not return Mendenhall’s smile and that he be suspicious of her statement that she was simply seeking the truth with an open mind and no agenda dictated from above.

She had her own private office. It was small but the chairs in front of her desk were comfortable. It even had a fireplace, as many of the offices in the old building did. The windows behind her looked out across Broadway to the building that housed the old Million Dollar Theater. She put a digital recorder on the desk, which was matched by Jackson’s own recorder, and they began. After identifying all parties in the room and going through the routine admonishments about police officers giving compelled statements, Mendenhall simply said, “Tell me about your trip on Monday to the prison at San Quentin.”

For the next twenty minutes Bosch relayed the facts regarding his trip to the prison to interview Rufus Coleman about the gun that had been used to kill Anneke Jespersen. He gave her every detail he could think of, including how long he had to wait before the prisoner was brought to him. Bosch and Jackson had decided at breakfast beforehand that Bosch would hold nothing back in hope that Mendenhall’s common sense would dictate that she see the complaint from O’Toole as a bullshit beef.

Bosch supplemented his story with copies of documents from the murder book so Mendenhall would see that it was absolutely necessary for him to travel to San Quentin to talk to Coleman and that the trip was not manufactured so that he could meet up with Shawn Stone.

The interview seemed to go well, with Mendenhall asking only general questions that allowed Bosch to expand. When he was finished she narrowed her focus to specifics.

“Did Shawn Stone know you were coming?” she asked.

“No, not at all,” Bosch replied.

“Did you tell his mother beforehand that you were going to see him?”

“No, I did not. It was an impromptu thing. Like I said before, my flights were set. I had the time for a quick meet and I asked to see him.”

“But they did bring him to you in the law enforcement interview room, correct?”

“That’s correct. They didn’t tell me to go to the family and friends visitation room. They said they would bring him to me.”

This was the only place where Bosch felt he was vulnerable. He had not asked to visit with Shawn Stone as a citizen would. He stayed in the room where they had brought in Rufus Coleman and simply asked to see another inmate—Stone. He knew that that could be seen as using his badge to get an advantage.

Mendenhall pressed on.

“Okay, and when you made the travel arrangements to go up to San Quentin, did you factor in time between flights so that you could have time to visit with Shawn Stone?”

“Absolutely not. You never know when you go up there how long it will take them to deliver your prisoner or how long the prisoner will talk to you. I’ve gone up there for what ended up being a one-minute interview, and I’ve gone up there when a one-hour interview turns into four. You never know, so you always give yourself extra time.”

“You gave yourself a four-hour window at the prison.”

“That’s about right. Plus you have the uncertainties of traffic. You have to fly up there, take the train to the rental-car center, get your car and get up to the city, get all the way across the city and then the Golden Gate, and then you have to do all of that coming back. You build in time for contingencies. I ended up with a little over four hours at the prison and I only used two waiting and then talking to Coleman. Do the math. I had extra time and I used it to see this kid.”

“Exactly when did you tell the guards you wanted to see Stone?”

“I remember looking at my watch as they took Coleman away. I saw it was two-thirty and I knew my flight was at six. I figured that even with traffic and rental-car return I still had at least an hour. I could get back to the airport earlier or I could see if they could bring me another prisoner real quick. I chose the latter.”

“Did you think of seeing if there was an earlier flight?”

“No, because it didn’t matter. My workday would be over when I got back to L.A. I wasn’t going into the office, so it didn’t matter if I landed at five or seven. I would be done for the day. There’s no overtime anymore. You know that, Detective.”

Jackson cut in and spoke for the first time during the interview.

“Also,” he said, “changing a flight often involves an additional fee. It can be anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, and if he had made that change, he’d have to answer to the budget and travel people about that.”

Bosch nodded. Jackson was improvising on Mendenhall’s question but had come up with a good add.

Mendenhall seemed to have a list she was going through, even though there was nothing on paper in front of her. She mentally ticked off the travel question and moved on to the next.

“Did you in any way lead the corrections officers at San Quentin to believe that you wished to speak to Shawn Stone as part of an investigation?”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, I did not. And I think when I asked how I could deposit money into his canteen account, it was clear that he was not part of an investigation.”

“But you asked about that after you spoke to Stone, correct?”

“Correct.”

There was a pause as she looked through the documents Bosch had provided.

“I think, gentlemen, that that’s it for now.”

“No more questions?” Bosch asked.

“For now. I may have follow-ups later.”

“Can I ask some questions now?”

“You can ask and I’ll answer if I can.”

Bosch nodded. Fair enough.

“How long will this take?”

Mendenhall frowned.

“Well, in actual investigation time I don’t think it will take long. Unless I can’t get what I need by phone from San Quentin and have to go up there.”

“So, they might spend the money to send you all the way up there to check out what I did with an extra hour of my time.”

“That would be my captain’s call. He’ll certainly look at the costs involved and the level of seriousness of the investigation. He also knows that I carry several other investigations at the moment. He might decide that it is not worth the expenditure of money and investigative time.”

Bosch had no doubt that they would send Mendenhall to San Quentin if needed. She might be in a bubble where there was no pressure from above, but her captain wasn’t.

“Anything else?” she asked. “I have an interview at nine that I should prepare for.”

“Yes, one more thing,” Bosch said. “Where did this complaint come from?”

Mendenhall seem surprised by the question.

“I can’t discuss that, but I thought you knew. I thought it was obvious.”

“No, I know it came from O’Toole. But the whole thing about me visiting Shawn Stone—how did he come up with that? How did he know?”

“That I can’t talk to you about, Detective. When my investigation is complete and I make a recommendation, you may become aware of those facts.”

Bosch nodded but the open question bothered him. Had someone from San Quentin called O’Toole to suggest Bosch had acted improperly, or had O’Toole pursued this, going so far as to check on Bosch’s activities at the prison? Either way, it was disconcerting to Bosch. He had walked in believing the 128 complaint would easily be discarded after his explanations to Mendenhall. Now he saw that things might not be so clear-cut.

After leaving the PSB, Jackson and Bosch took one of the ornately designed elevators down to the lobby. To Bosch, the century-old Bradbury Building was far and away the most beautiful building in the city. The only blemish on its image was the fact that it housed the Professional Standards Bureau. As they crossed the lobby beneath the atrium to the West Third Street exit, Bosch could smell the fresh bread being baked for the lunch rush in the sandwich shop next to the building’s main entrance. That was another thing that always bothered him. Not only was the PSB housed in one of the city’s hidden gems and not only were there fireplaces in some of the offices, but the place also smelled so damn good every time Bosch was there.

Jackson was quiet as they moved through the lobby and then turned left into the dimly lit side-exit lobby. There was a bench with a bronze statue of Charlie Chaplin sitting on it. Jackson sat down next to the figure and signaled Bosch to the other side.

“What?” Bosch said as he sat down. “We should get back.”

Jackson was upset. He shook his head and leaned across Charlie Chaplin’s lap so he could whisper.

“Harry,” he said. “I think you’re really screwed on this.”

Bosch didn’t understand Jackson’s mood or his apparent surprise that the department would go to this length over a fifteen-minute interview in San Quentin. But to Bosch this was nothing new. The first time he got dinged by Internal Affairs was thirty-five years earlier. He caught a beef for stopping by a dry cleaner’s—which was on his beat—to pick up his pressed uniforms while on his way to the station at the end of watch. Since then, nothing surprised him about how the department policed its own.

“So what,” he said dismissively. “Let her sustain the complaint. What’s the worst they could give me? Three days? A week? I’ll take my kid to Hawaii.”

Jackson shook his head again.

“You don’t get it, do you?”

Now Bosch was thoroughly confused.

“Don’t get what? It’s Internal Affairs, no matter what they’re calling it now. What’s not to get?”

“This is not just about a week’s suspension. You’re on the DROP, man. That’s a contract and you don’t have the same protections—that’s probably why nobody from the League called you back. A contract can be voided on a CUBO.”

Now it hit Bosch. The year before, he had signed a five-year contract under the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. He had effectively retired in order to freeze his pension and then came back to work under the contract. There was a clause in that contract that allowed the department to dismiss him if he was found guilty of committing a crime or if an internal charge of Conduct Unbecoming an Officer was sustained against him.

“Don’t you see what O’Fool is doing?” Jackson asked. “He’s reshaping the squad, trying to make it his squad. Anybody he doesn’t like or has a problem with or isn’t showing him the proper respect and allegiance, he’ll pull this sort of shit to move them out.”

Bosch nodded as he saw the scheme come together. He knew what Jackson didn’t; that O’Toole might not be acting alone, just to feather his nest. He might be doing the bidding of the man on the tenth floor.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he said.

“Oh, shit,” Jackson said. “What?”

“Not here. Let’s go.”

They left Charlie Chaplin behind and headed back to the PAB on foot. Along the way, Bosch told Jackson two stories, one old and the other new. The first was the backstory behind the case Bosch worked the year before involving the death of then-councilman Irvin Irving’s son. Bosch recounted how he had been used by the chief and a former partner he trusted in a successful political coup, resulting in Irving losing his bid for reelection. A police department sympathizer was elected in his stead.

“That already put me on a collision course with Marty,” he said. “And with the case I’m working now, we’ve collided.”

He then explained how the man on the tenth floor was trying through O’Toole to pressure him into slowing down the forward momentum of the Anneke Jespersen case. By the time he was finished with the story, Bosch guessed that Jackson fully regretted having signed on as Harry’s defense rep.

“So, in the grand scheme of things,” Jackson said as they entered the front courtyard of the PAB, “you are not interested in slowing it down, not even just pushing it quietly over into next year?”

Bosch shook his head.

“She’s waited too long,” he said. “And whoever killed her has been free too long. I’m not slowing down for anything.”

Jackson nodded as they went through the automatic doors.

“I didn’t think so.”