The Burning Room

23

Bosch got to the squad room at seven Monday morning and found Soto already at her desk. He noticed that she was wearing the same clothes as the day before.

“You were here all night?”

“I was working on the nexus and lost track of time. I slept a few hours downstairs. Not worth going home and back.”

Bosch nodded. There was a cot room down on the garage level available on a first-come first-served basis. The room was open to male and female officers but he didn’t think he had ever heard of a female officer making use of it. He was continuing to be amazed by Soto’s commitment to the cases and the job.

“‘Nexus’?” he asked.

“That’s what I’m calling this search for a connection between the EZBank three and the Bonnie Brae apartments,” she said.

“You get anything?”

“Not yet. But I’m only halfway through the tenants list. I’ll hopefully finish today.”

Bosch dropped his files on his desk and sat down heavily in his chair. Soto read his body language.

“What’s up with you?”

Bosch shook his head and pulled a folded piece of paper out of one of the files. He handed it to her. It was a printout of a story from the Riverside Press-Enterprise dated March 23, 2005. It was a brief story and Soto quickly read it.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“I think it means Broussard covered his tracks,” he said. “We’re not going to get him.”

“I don’t understand. There are no names in this. This was an accidental shooting?”

“According to that story. I’ll pull the Riverside sheriff’s file on it today.”

“Where did this come from?”

“Yesterday I went to the range Broussard used to own out there. I did some shooting with my daughter. The guy who owns and runs the place mentioned that he got it from Broussard after the accident.”

Bosch nodded at the printout in her hand.

“My kid found that in the newspaper’s digital archives. No names, but the guy who ran the range for Broussard was killed in a hunting accident. The headline says ‘Hunter Kills Best Friend in Accidental Shooting.’ What do you want to bet that when I get the file, the hunter is Broussard?”

“There were no other stories after this one?”

“That’s another thing. No other stories after that little brief. You ask me, somebody with some juice put a stopper on this.”

Soto nodded as she was taking it all in.

“So why are you so sure we can’t get to Broussard?”

Bosch held his hands out wide.

“Well, if we assume that whoever took the shot at Mariachi Plaza came out of that range in Riverside, then it was probably either set up by the guy who ran the place or he was the one who took the shot. Either way, he was the connection to Broussard and now that connection is gone. He’s been dead for nine years.”

He pointed to the printout again as if that proved his words.

“There’s gotta be…,” Soto began. “We still have Ojeda.”

“He’s not enough,” Bosch said. “No DA would touch this with what we’ve got. We’d get laughed out of the CCB. We’ve got no evidence. No gun, no direct witness, no—”

Bosch stopped as he thought of something.

“What?” Soto asked.

“It’s slim,” he said. “But when I get the name of the guy who ran the range — the guy working there yesterday called him Dave — I’ll run his name through the ATF computer. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find out he owned a Kimber Montana. It won’t be enough to get us in the door at the D.A.’s Office but it will be another piece.”

He took the page back from Soto and turned to his desk. He thought about first moves. Making an inquiry at another law enforcement agency was a delicate matter, especially when it was one so close to L.A. There were invariably connections and relationships between the two — a cross-pollination of personnel that could cause difficulty for the unwitting caller. It was always better to make an entrance through a known entity — a lateral rather than direct approach.

Bosch had several contacts to choose from. Over the last few years that he worked in the Open-Unsolved Unit, there had been a number of cases with ties to Riverside County, and he had slowly filled the space in his mental Rolodex behind the R card. He decided to try Steve Bennett, who was a missing-persons investigator with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Bosch wasn’t calling about a missing person but he knew Bennett had been with the department a long time, had worked in several different capacities as an investigator, and would know where and how to look for what Bosch needed.

After an exchange of long-time-no-sees and other pleasantries, Bosch asked Bennett if he could find out about the fatal accident that occurred nine years before at the White Tail Hunting Ranch. Having been given the exact date of the shooting, Bennett said he didn’t think it would take him long to pull up a record and check the lay of the land. He told Bosch he would call back when he had something. Bosch in turn asked him to keep his inquiries below the surface. Nobody else needed to know.

Bosch ended the call and told Soto he was going to walk over to the Starbucks a block down 1st Street. It was Monday and he was going to start the week off with something other than what came out of the machine in the PAB lobby.

“You know it all comes out of a machine, Harry,” Soto responded. “A brewer. Some places are just fancier than others.”

“True,” Bosch said. “But every now and then I like the human touch that comes with handcrafted coffee.”

It was a line he borrowed from his daughter. Soto gave no reaction.

“So you want anything or not?”

“No, I’m good. I went down there about an hour ago for the human touch.”

“Right.”

Bosch left the building and was halfway to the coffee shop when his cell buzzed. It was Bennett with the callback from Riverside County.

“Harry, I don’t have a lot,” he said. “They closed this thing up pretty quick. A real tragedy, it looks like. A guy killed his best friend when he mistook him for a deer or a hog or something in the brush out there.”

Bosch walked over to a bench in a bus stop shelter so he could sit down, hold the phone in the crook of his neck, and take some notes.

“Okay,” he said. “You have the names of the shooter and victim?”

“The shooter was Charles Andrew Broussard. That’s bravo-romeo—”

“I got that spelling. What’s the vic’s name?”

“David Alexander Willman. Common spelling on all if you don’t have it. Age forty-two. He was the manager of the ranch and Broussard was the owner. Says here they were best friends since high school, growing up in Hemet. They were hunting and got separated in something called the ‘hog chute’—spelled C-H-U-T-E — which is described here as a narrow canyon on the ranch, and somehow Willman showed up where Broussard didn’t think he was going to be. Broussard thought it was a hog they were tracking and hit him from thirty yards. Through-and-through neck wound. Willman died at the scene. Bled out.”

Bosch jotted down a few words that would prompt his memory of the summary.

“What was Broussard shooting?” he asked.

“Uh, let’s see here… an Encore Pro Hunter,” Bennett said. “It was a .308.”

“And what about Willman? Does it say what he was carrying?”

“Uh… nothing here about what he had, Harry.”

“Okay, any inventory on the report?”

“Just Broussard’s gun.”

It had been a faint hope — that Willman’s rifle would be listed or even held in evidence.

“Who was the investigator?” he asked.

“Bill Templeton,” Bennett said. “He’s still with the department. He’s a captain now.”

“You know him?”

“I know him but I don’t really know him. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

Bosch had to think for a moment as he phrased the next question. A bus pulled up to the curb and he had to get up and walk away from the shelter to escape the noise.

“You out on the street, Harry?” Bennett asked.

“Yeah, getting coffee,” Bosch said. “Listen, Steve, did you know of Templeton as an investigator? I’m wondering if he was the kind of guy that would close a case quick because he was lazy about it, or if he was the kind that could be encouraged to close a case.”

There was a long silence before Bennett answered.

“Hard to tell from this report and I never worked directly with the guy. But I heard Templeton is a golfer, and before every shot, he throws a little grass up into the air to see which way the wind blows.”

Bosch understood the meaning. Templeton might not have been resistant to encouragement to close the accident investigation quickly, especially if it came from above.

“Harry, you want the OSHA report number?” Bennett asked. “The report isn’t here but they must have signed off on it. I have a number.”

Bosch returned to the bus bench so he could take down the number. He also asked for Willman’s birth date and home address along with the identifiers of his wife, Audrey. He then thanked Bennett for his quick help.

“Keep that golf thing to yourself, okay?” Bennett said. “Don’t need Templeton on my ass.”

“Of course,” Bosch said. “I owe you one.”

After disconnecting the call Bosch turned around and headed back to the PAB without completing the coffee run. He no longer needed the caffeine burst.

Back at his computer Bosch ran David Alexander Willman through the crime databases and drew a blank. Willman had a clean record as far as Bosch could determine.

He next opened up the ATF gun registration site and ran a search on Willman. Even though Willman was deceased, the database would carry any gun transactions he had legally made. This time Bosch got results. Willman was listed as a gun dealer whose federal license lapsed six years before, when it was not renewed after his death.

Bosch guessed that being a gun dealer went hand in hand with operating a hunting ranch and gun range. The ATF search also pulled up a number of transactions in the eight years before his death. Willman had bought and sold dozens of guns. Bosch combed through the list and found the purchases of two different Kimber Model 84 rifles. Willman had bought them in 2000 and 2002, long before Orlando Merced had been shot with such a weapon.

Harry then went through Willman’s sales reports and found only one of the two rifles had been resold. It meant that at the time of his death Willman owned a Kimber Montana. It didn’t mean he was in possession of the weapon, but it was registered in his name.

Regardless, Bosch was now encouraged. He thought he might have a line on the murder weapon. It had been nine years since Willman died. The rifle could have long disappeared. If Willman didn’t dump it right after the Merced shooting, then Broussard probably got rid of it after he killed Willman. All of this was mere conjecture, Bosch knew, but he had to acknowledge that there was a chance Willman had been smart and had hung on to the rifle as leverage with his friend Broussard. He could have said he got rid of it but in reality kept it hidden somewhere just in case things went sideways.

Bosch wrote the serial number of the rifle down in his notebook and then started a new computer search, this time looking at Riverside County property records. When he got what he needed he turned to Soto.

“I’m going back out to Riverside,” he said.

She turned from her computer to look at him.

“What’s out there?”

“I got a callback. Broussard was the shooter out there that day. Killed his friend David Willman and it was ruled an accident. But Willman was a gun dealer and bought a Kimber Montana he never sold. It might be out there.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got the address where Willman lived but his wife sold it two years after his death and traded up. She’s in Rancho Mirage. I was thinking I’d start there. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she still has the gun.”

Soto thought about it for a moment and then said, “I’m going with you.”

“What about the nexus?”

“It can wait. You’re not going out there looking for a gun without your partner.”

Bosch nodded.

“You like chili rice?” he asked. “I know a good place to stop about halfway out.”