The Burning Room

25

They left the house fifteen minutes later and Bosch secured the legal pad in his briefcase. Rather than drive toward the 10 freeway, which would get them back to L.A. the fastest, Bosch pointed the car toward Hemet.

“Where are we going?” Soto asked.

“To the house Willman lived in when he was alive,” Bosch said.

“The gun?”

He nodded.

“Just a hunch. It’s gotta be somewhere. I want to check out the garage that Audrey said was used as her husband’s gun room.”

“You don’t think Broussard got it? I mean, that’s why he felt he was in the clear to eliminate Willman.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Willman told him after the Mariachi Plaza shooting that he had gotten rid of it. Broussard may have only thought he was in the clear.”

“But instead Willman hung on to it? Hid it somewhere?”

Bosch nodded.

“Maybe. Like an insurance policy. Maybe he hid it somewhere his wife didn’t know to look after Broussard killed him.”

Soto nodded, buying in.

“Okay. Do we need a search warrant?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Not if we’re invited in.”

They drove in silence for a while and then Soto asked a question.

“What did you think of Audrey? She really wanted to tell us about that lawsuit.”

“She did. I think she feels guilty.”

“About what?”

“She took the money and shut up. She knows the money — however much it was — was Broussard buying his way out. Over time that’s got to be tough to live with. Doesn’t matter how fancy your digs are. It all came from hush money. Anyway, we need to find another way into the lawsuit, maybe talk to the D.A.’s Office to see what they can do about breaking the seal on it.”

“I’d sure love to read it.”

They got to Hemet in a half hour. Along the way Bosch took a call from Captain Crowder, who wanted an update on where the investigation stood. Bosch told him that they were following a lead on the murder weapon and hoped to have something solid to report later in the day or by morning. This appeased the captain for the time being and he ended the call without asking further questions.

The house where the Willmans had lived before Dave’s death at the hands of Broussard was a modest ranch house in a middle-class neighborhood. It was freshly painted and had a neatly trimmed yard and an attached double garage. The property records Bosch had checked said it now belonged to someone named Bernard Contreras.

A woman of about thirty answered Bosch’s knock on the door. She looked like she was at least seven months pregnant.

“Mrs. Contreras?”

“Yes?”

Bosch pulled his badge and identified himself and Soto.

“We’re homicide investigators and we are out here looking for a gun that may have been involved in a case we are working,” Bosch said.

The woman put her hand over her protruding stomach as if to protect her unborn child from even the word gun.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “We have no guns in this household.”

“We’re not talking about you or your husband,” Bosch said. “We’re here because the man who lived here before you had guns.”

“The man who was killed?”

“Correct, the man who was killed. He was a gun dealer and we are looking for one of his guns.”

“That was a long time ago. My husband and I bought this place—”

“We know that. That’s why we have a favor to ask. We’re hoping you’ll be willing to help us with the investigation.”

The woman looked suspiciously at Bosch and maintained her guarded stance.

“What is it?”

“We want to look in your garage.”

“Why would you want to look in my garage?”

“Because the previous owner — the man who was killed — kept at least part of his inventory in the garage here. We want to take a look and just satisfy ourselves that the gun we are looking for is not here.”

“We’ve lived here six years. I think we would have found a gun if one was left behind.”

“I think you’re probably right, Mrs. Contreras. But we’re cops and we need to see for ourselves so we can rule it out. Besides, this gun — if it is here — would have been hidden.”

The woman dropped her hand from her belly and seemed to relax a little bit. Bosch thought that maybe she was now curious herself.

“Do you need to have a search warrant or something like that?” she asked.

“Not if you invite us in to search,” Bosch said.

She thought about it for a moment before giving the go-ahead.

“I’ll open the door,” she said. “But we have a lot of boxes in there. Stuff we’re taking to storage and I don’t want you going through it.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Contreras. We’re not going to be looking through your property.”

She stepped back and closed the door. Bosch and Soto walked along a flagstone path to the driveway and waited in front of the garage. The door had no windows and Bosch guessed that this was a security measure taken by Willman when he had stored guns in the garage.

The door started slowly going up. Mrs. Contreras was waiting inside, her hand back in place on top of her stomach.

Bosch stepped in and looked about. It was a standard two-car garage with a workbench taking up the space in one of the bays and storage shelves and a water heater lining the back wall. None of the walls had been finished, exposing the wood framework and insulation. It was a cost-cutting move elected by the contractor or home buyer when the house was originally built.

There was a compact car in the bay opposite the workbench and it was clear to Bosch that Mrs. Contreras got to park in the garage while her husband used the driveway or the street.

The garage had exposed rafters and a storage platform overhead. Several boxes were stacked up there. Bosch pointed up.

“Those boxes up there are yours?”

“Yes. Ours. This place was completely empty when we moved in. If there was a gun we would have seen it.”

Mounted to the two-by-fours of the wall on either side of the workbench were side-by-side cabinets made of heavy steel with key locks and additional hasps for padlocks.

“Those are gun cases,” Bosch said. “They were here when you moved in?”

“Yes, they were left by Mrs. Willman when we bought the place.”

“Are they locked?”

“No, we don’t lock them,” Contreras said. “You can check them.”

Bosch opened the cabinets and saw they were being used for routine storage. No guns. He used a stepladder that was next to the workbench to look over the top of the cabinets. Dust and dead bugs lay on top of each but no guns.

Bosch moved over to the workbench. A vise with a padded grip was mounted on one end and a second smaller vise was mounted at a midpoint on the six-foot-long bench. He stepped closer and could smell the faint scents of break-free oil and bore solvent, two materials every gun dealer would have in supply.

“This bench was also left here? The vises — they’re set up for holding a rifle while you work on the bore or add a scope.”

“Yes, the bench was also left here and we decided to use it. It takes up a lot of space, though. My husband has to park in the driveway but he doesn’t mind. He likes to tinker in here on Saturdays.”

Bosch just nodded. He was looking at the bench, its work surface stained with oil. It was obviously homemade, constructed of two-by-fours and plywood. It had a work surface on top and one shelf below. Both surfaces were inch-thick plywood, framed underneath by lengths of two-by-fours. It was a sturdy, heavy construction that at the moment supported a variety of power tools and other equipment.

Bosch put his hand on the bench for support and squatted down to look under the top surface. In the corner of the thick frame, he saw a gun attached to the underside with plastic ties.

“There’s a gun under here,” he said. “A handgun.”

“Oh my gosh!” Mrs. Contreras exclaimed.

Bosch took a pair of rubber gloves out of his jacket pocket and put them on. He then pulled out his phone and squatted down to take photos of the gun in place, using the flash to illuminate the dark underside of the bench. He then grabbed a carpet cutter from the array of tools on top of the bench and used it to slash the plastic ties.

He pulled the gun free and stood up to look at it with Soto. It was a Glock P17. Mrs. Contreras leaned in to study it as well, and her face took on a look of trepidation.

After a moment, Bosch handed the weapon to Soto, who had also put on rubber gloves, and started to take off his jacket. To look under the lower shelf of the bench, he was going to have to get down on the oil-stained floor. Mrs. Contreras noticed what he was doing and pulled a tarp off one of the shelves at the back of the garage. She started unfolding it and spreading it on the floor.

“Use this so you don’t ruin your clothes,” she said.

Soon Bosch was down on the floor, using the glow from his phone screen to illuminate the recesses of the underside of the lower shelf. There was another firearm — this one a long gun — and he took photos again before asking for the carpet cutter to slash through the plastic ties.

He handed the heavy weapon up to Soto and then got up.

“Oh my god,” Mrs. Contreras said.

She now had both her hands protecting her unborn child.

The gun was not a Kimber Model 84. Bosch recognized it as an M60 machine gun. Vietnam era, fed by ammo belts worn like bandoliers by the men who humped it through the jungle. Two bandoliers had been on the inventory list of guns and ammo sold by Willman’s wife after his death. Here was the weapon the belts went with. Bosch wondered if Willman had hidden the machine gun and the Glock because they were stolen or because they were valuable memorabilia.

“Is that what you were looking for?” Mrs. Contreras asked.

“No, not it,” Bosch said.

He took the weapon from Soto because he could tell she was straining from the weight of it. Those who carried the M60 through the Vietnamese jungle had a love/hate relationship with it. They called it “the pig” whenever they had to lug the heavy weapon out on patrol. But heavy or not, it was the best gun to be holding in your hands in a firefight. Bosch carefully cradled it in the jaws of the twin bench vises.

Bosch stepped back from the bench and looked around the garage one more time. He was invigorated from finding the two weapons. They weren’t what he was looking for but they proved that Willman had hidden guns. It supported his hope that the Kimber Montana might still be found.

His eyes went up to the overhead rafters.

“You can go up there if you want,” Mrs. Contreras said.

She was now fully supportive of the search for weapons in the home she would soon be raising a child in. There was a fiberglass extension ladder on a rack on the other side of the garage. Bosch took it off the rack and, careful not to hit the car, walked it around to the bench. He extended it and propped it against one of the crossbeams and then held it steady while Soto went up first. He followed and they found themselves ducking below a low ceiling on a makeshift floor of planks spread across the crossbeams.

Bosch looked for hiding spots, but there was really nowhere in the rafters to hide a rifle or any other weapon. He was about to give up the search when Soto called him over to the edge of the platform. He kept his hand up on one of the roof trusses for support.

Soto pointed down through the opening between two of the crossbeams to one of the steel gun cabinets. He didn’t readily see what she wanted him to see.

“What?” he said.

“Behind the cabinet,” she said. “It’s attached to the two-by-fours but there is room between them.”

She was right. There was more than a foot between each of the two-by-fours that ran vertically along the wall frame. Each of the spaces between was crammed with strips of insulation but they could easily have been removed behind the gun cabinets to create a secret storage space big enough for a rifle. Bosch had not realized the possibility of this when he had looked over the top of the cabinets before.

“We need to take the cabinets down,” he said.

It took them a half hour to remove the contents of each of the cabinets and then for Bosch — using Bernard Contreras’s tools — to loosen the bolts attaching the first steel cabinet to the two-by-fours behind it. To finish the project, he then had to hand the wrench to Soto while he attempted to hold the heavy steel cabinet.

Working from the stepladder, Soto removed the four loosened bolts, and Bosch felt the weight hit him. It was too much.

“Look out!”

He let cabinet slide down the two-by-fours to the floor, where it hit the cement with a loud bang.

“Everybody all right?”

As the two women reported that they were fine, Bosch looked at the place on the wall where the cabinet had been. There was indeed a vertical space four inches deep between two of the two-by-fours. A length of wood had been nailed into place between the verticals to create a bottom rest to the hiding place. There was no gun there but there was a sheathed sword in the space. Bosch took it down to examine it. It was caked with dust. It looked like some kind of samurai sword and had a slight bend to its long blade, which had remained shiny and clean in its sheath.

Bosch leaned the sword against the workbench and moved on to the second gun cabinet.

Having learned from the first effort, Bosch took only ten minutes to loosen bolts on the second cabinet and put Soto in position on the stepladder. This time he knew what to expect and used his weight against the cabinet to slowly slide it down the wall. He heard Soto announce that there was a gun in the second hiding spot before he even straightened up.

It was a rifle. Bosch’s adrenaline kicked in. He wanted to grab it and check to see if it was a Kimber, but he waited while Soto photographed it with her phone. He then took it down from the space and held it out across his body. Soto leaned in to help examine it for brand markings.

“I need my glasses,” Bosch said.

“There!” Soto said, excitedly pointing to the left side of the rifle’s receiver. “‘Kimber Model 84.’ It has to be it.”

She located the serial number to the left of the brand mark and asked Bosch if he had the number from his notes. Bosch gave her the gun and went to his jacket, which Mrs. Contreras was holding, for his reading glasses and notebook. He flipped the notebook open to the page with the serial number written on it and read it out loud to Soto.

“It’s a match,” she said.

Her voice had a tremble as she said it.

They had found David Willman’s unaccounted-for rifle. The next step was to see if it was also the rifle used to shoot Orlando Merced.

Bosch put on his jacket and looked at the two gun cabinets on the floor of the garage. There was no way he was going to be able to put them back in place.

“Mrs. Contreras, we are going to have to take these weapons with us,” he said.

“Please do,” she said. “My husband’s not going to believe this.”

“Well, your husband may not be happy, because I’m not going to be able to lift those cabinets up and put them back.”

“Don’t worry. He and his friends can do that. They hang out in here enough and this will be a great story for him to tell.”

“That makes me feel better. We’re going to write out a receipt for you now.”

They put the weapons in the trunk of the car, laying them across a blanket Bosch kept in his surveillance kit. They then thanked Mrs. Contreras and gave her the receipt.

Finally they headed back toward Los Angeles. There was an almost palpable excitement in the car. Bosch had started the day feeling that he had reached a dead end on the case because Broussard had taken the ultimate measure in protecting himself. But now things were different. He had what he believed would prove to be the murder weapon in his trunk. It had been a fast turnabout.

Bosch checked his watch and figured it would be almost five by the time they got back to the city. He pulled his phone and called the gun shop at the crime lab. He asked for Gun Chung.

“How long are you going to be there?” Bosch asked.

“I’m on the schedule till four,” Chung said. “What’s up?”

“We have the gun from the mariachi thing. At least we think we do. But we won’t get there in time. We’re coming in from Riverside.”

“How far out are you?”

“I’m thinking closer to five.”

“It’s okay. I’ll wait. Bring it right here and I’ll do the comparison.”

“We won’t have to wait in line?”

“I’ll be on my own time. I can do what I want.”

“I appreciate that, man. We’ll be there as soon as we can. Can you do me one other favor?”

“What is it?”

“Call up to latents and see if somebody can meet us. I’d like to see if we can pull prints off this.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Bosch disconnected the call and told Soto that they were going directly to the lab where Gun Chung was willing to wait for them to do a comparison between the slug taken from Orlando Merced’s spine and a bullet fired from the rifle in the trunk.

“Let’s say it’s a match,” she said. “That we have the murder weapon.”

“Okay,” Bosch said.

“Let’s run the scenario. I want to try to see how this works.”

Bosch nodded. It was a good exercise to a certain extent. The investigator never wanted to create a scenario and then work the evidence to fit it. But starting with the assumption that they had just recovered the murder weapon led to some inalterable conclusions.

“Well, you start by going back to our original theory based on the ballistics and the video evidence,” he said.

“That the bullet that hit Merced was intended for Ojeda,” Soto said.

“Right. Then from there you have the confirmation that the weapon belonged to David Willman. Did he take the shot? We don’t know that. Did he have the skill? Yes. Did he know someone he could have given his gun to so they could take the shot? I think that’s also a yes.”

He drove for a few minutes, grinding out the story in his head before continuing.

“Okay, so if you draw a line between Ojeda and Willman, who else does it intersect?”

“Broussard.”

“Broussard. He grew up with Willman and was in business with him.”

“And his wife was having an affair with Ojeda.”

Bosch nodded.

“The way I see this from Broussard’s angle is he warned Ojeda to stay away from his wife but Ojeda wouldn’t move on. So Broussard goes to Willman and says, ‘I need a piece of work taken care of.’ Willman takes the job and sets it up with a shooter or decides to handle the job himself. I’m guessing the latter — rule of thumb, the fewer people in a conspiracy, the better.”

“Agreed. I go with Willman.”

“Willman takes the shot but hits Merced instead of Ojeda. Everything goes sideways. Now they know that if they hit Ojeda, it will really bring some heat because there is no way the police will continue to think the first one was a random shot or gang related. They’ll know there is something going on here. So Broussard has no choice but to tell Willman to stand down — at least for now.”

“Meantime, Ojeda sticks around just long enough to feed his bullshit statement to the cops and then splits town.”

“So the shot actually does the job. They hit the wrong guy but the right guy goes away anyway.”

“And Willman becomes a loose end for Broussard. A guy who knows the secret.”

“You have to wonder why Willman agreed to go out hunting with Broussard that day. He must’ve told him that he had an insurance policy.”

“He kept the gun.”

“Broussard must’ve somehow thought he was in the clear, that the gun wasn’t going to show up and connect up the whole thing, with him in the middle.”

Soto turned completely sideways to look at Bosch as she made the next connection.

“It was the bullet! It was inside Merced. He must’ve thought when Merced survived and they weren’t going to take the bullet out of him that Willman’s ace in the hole wasn’t as valuable as he thought. It didn’t matter if he kept the rifle, since there was no slug to compare it to because it wasn’t removed from Merced. There was no way to prove it had fired the shot.”

Bosch nodded.

“Willman thought he was safe enough to give Broussard a gun and go off into the woods with him. Only he wasn’t.”

They sat with it in silence for a while. Bosch ran it all through once more and couldn’t knock it down. It was only case theory but it held together. It worked, but it didn’t mean that it was the way it had happened. Every case had unanswered questions and loose ends when it came to motives and actions. Bosch always thought that if you started with the assumption that murder is an unreasonable action, then how could there ever be a fully reasonable explanation for it? It was that understanding that kept him from watching and being able to enjoy films and television shows about detectives. He found them unrealistic in their delivery of what the general audience wanted: all of the answers.

He looked up at the overhead freeway signs. They were coming up on the exit for Cal State, where Gun Chung waited for them in the lab.