The Burning Room

30

They traded updates once Soto made it back to the car, and Bosch headed toward the PAB. She summarized the interview with Stephanie Perez and then he recounted his conversation with Crowder, reporting that the captain was at first upset to hear that the Merced investigation had temporarily stalled but then was placated when informed that Bosch and Soto were closing in on something regarding the much bigger Bonnie Brae case — a break that happened to come out of an anonymous call to the Merced tip line.

“Speaking of Crowder,” he said, “I need to drop you back at the PAB while I go to breakfast. Crowder said media relations approved an interview with you and a reporter from La Opinión. It’s been over a week since Orlando Merced passed and they want to run an update. I told him to set it up now so we have the rest of the day. You do that while I meet my federal friend.”

“Okay,” Soto said. “How much do I tell the reporter?”

Bosch took the car across the 110 freeway overpass and glanced down as he considered Soto’s question. All ten lanes looked as though they were frozen.

“Well, you don’t mention Broussard by name.”

“Right. What about the rifle?”

Bosch wasn’t sure.

“Ask Crowder,” he said. “Let him decide. We put it out and we might stir things up. Put some pressure on Broussard.”

“Okay, I’ll ask. Does Crowder know about Broussard?”

“I’ve left that out of my updates.”

“Does he know we’re looking at someone?”

“I left that out, too.”

“Got it.”

“Good. In the meantime, if I don’t get back by the time you’re finished, try to confirm locations on Ana Acevedo. We might be most interested in Burrows but we need to talk to Acevedo to tie in the story. Boiko, too.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, did you ask Perez if she ever thought Ana had started the fire?”

“I did and she said no. She said Ana wasn’t a good roommate but she was a good person. She said she would never have done something like that.”

Bosch thought about this answer. They were looking into the possibility that, good person or not, Ana Acevedo had direct involvement with the fire or at least the men who started it — as well as the robbery connected to it.

“Harry,” Soto said. “Do you want me to reschedule my shrink session?”

Bosch came out of his thoughts and looked over at her. He had forgotten. It was Wednesday and Soto had her regular afternoon session with Dr. Hinojos at Behavioral Sciences.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “See if she’ll let you skip this week. We have things moving on this. Let’s not break momentum.”

“I’ll call her.”

“And I’ll be back in an hour. Maybe we’ll know more about Burrows by then.”

“Who is this agent you’re meeting?”

“She works in an intelligence unit. They throw out the net, you know. Then they analyze.”

“I thought it was a she. Your voice completely changed when you were talking to her on the phone today. It was like when you talk to your daughter. You get all nice.”

Bosch glanced over at her. He didn’t know whether to compliment her perception or tell her to mind her own business.

“Yeah, well. There’s a history.”

“And she wants to meet you by yourself.”

“That’s just the way she is. She’ll say more if it’s just me.”

“Whatever works, Harry.”

Bosch nodded. He was happy to move on from a discussion about Rachel Walling.

“Okay, let’s go back to Stephanie Perez for a minute before you jump out. Through her we have all three of these EZBank people in the Bonnie Brae.”

“That’s absolutely solid. We have her six-pack IDs and her take on Burrows, which confirms the racist attitudes.”

“Okay, what about Ana? How did she and Perez hook up? How long did they share the apartment before Perez made her move out?”

“Stephanie said they lived together for a year and she got her after putting a roommate-needed notice on the bulletin board in the complex’s laundry room.”

“Ana was already living there?”

“No, but she had lived there when she was a kid. She was back visiting friends, saw the notice, and made contact with Perez. She said she wanted to live there because she knew the place and could walk to work. She didn’t have a car.”

Bosch nodded. This was all good. In her earlier summary of the Perez interview Soto had also said that Burrows spent at least two nights a week in the apartment with Acevedo over a three-month period leading up to the point where Acevedo was asked to leave. Boiko was a less frequent visitor but was still an occasional overnight guest as well. But when Perez started complaining about the situation, Acevedo reacted by making both men get involved in the upkeep of the apartment. This included chores such as taking out the trash.

All of this was based on Stephanie Perez’s twenty-one-year-old memories but it was positive in terms of case momentum. What Bosch and Soto needed now was further confirmation through Acevedo, Burrows, and Boiko themselves.

“We really need to find Ana Acevedo,” Bosch said.

“I told you,” Soto said. “I’m on it.”

They were stopped at a light at 1st and Hill, a few blocks from the PAB.

“Gus Braley said the video showed her pulling the alarm before the robbers came in,” he said. “Based on that, they decided back then that she wasn’t part of the robbery.”

“You’re thinking otherwise?”

“Not yet. But I’m looking at the video from the opposite side of things now.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, if you knew there was a camera on you, then you probably knew that if you didn’t pull the alarm, you were guaranteeing you would be considered a suspect.”

Soto thought about that for a bit and then nodded.

“I get it,” she said.

“That’s why we need to find her and talk to her,” Bosch said. “You said she’s disappeared. No DL, no record, whereabouts unknown. I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I. Do you think she’s dead? Maybe they used her and buried her in the desert.”

Bosch nodded. It was a possibility.

“The other thing is, we don’t have any idea about the two gunmen,” he said. “All three of these people we’re talking about were inside EZBank. They didn’t commit the actual robbery.”

“Or start the fire.”

“If one of these people is the insider, they lead us to the other two.”

“Can we back up and just talk about how the whole thing went down?”

The light changed and Bosch proceeded.

“You have the two guys in the car,” he said. “Their first stop is the Bonnie Brae. One of them goes in and drops the Molotov down the trash chute.”

“They start the fire, then head to the cash box,” Soto said.

“Right. They’ve got a scanner in the car and pull up close to the target and wait to hear the response on the fire. When they hear ‘all units,’ they go to the cash box. Or maybe they’re not that sophisticated. They just pull over and wait for sirens. When they hear the big response, they go in, hit the target, and have time to get away before police can respond.”

Bosch pulled the car up to the courtyard that fronted the PAB. Soto hopped out and looked back in at him.

“I think it works,” she said.

Bosch nodded.

“See you in an hour,” he said.

Rachel Walling was waiting for Bosch in a booth in a back room of the restaurant on 6th Street. It was the room reserved for heavy hitters and regulars. With three round tables for big parties and three booths for smaller parties, the room was at capacity, and Bosch recognized half the faces from City Hall. He wasn’t sure who they all were but they were at least mid-level important or they wouldn’t be eating breakfast at 9 a.m. on a workday.

Rachel Walling didn’t look like she had aged a day since he had last seen her. Her jawline was cut sharply, her neck taut, her brown hair with hints of raven in it. Her eyes were always the thing with Bosch. Dark, piercing, unreadable. A vibration went through him as he approached, a reminder of what could have been. There was a time when he had this woman, and then things went wrong. When it came to the women in his life, there were only a few regrets. She would always be one of them.

She smiled and put aside the folded newspaper she had been reading as he slid into the booth.

“Harry.”

“Sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not that late. Are things happening?”

“Beginning to.”

Walling indicated the newspaper she had put to the side.

“You were in the paper last week about that mariachi musician dying. Can I ask, were you asking about Rodney Burrows in regard to that?”

“Not really, no. I have other cases. You know how it is.”

“Sure. I was just curious about the fit on this.”

“No, like I told you on the phone, I’m interested in the fire that killed all those kids. Were you able to get me something? I see the newspaper but I don’t see a file or anything.”

She smiled as if parrying an insult.

“You know we don’t give files out. We’re not really the sharing kind.”

The waiter came up with a coffeepot and Bosch signaled that he’d take a cup. The waiter asked if they knew what they wanted to order or needed a menu. Bosch hadn’t needed a menu in the Pacific Dining Car in twenty-five years. He looked at Rachel.

“Are we going to eat or is this going to be short and sweet?” he asked.

“We’re going to eat,” she said. “I told you, I’m hungry.”

They ordered without the menu and the waiter went away. Bosch took a draw of hot coffee and then fixed Walling with a look that said it was time to give.

“So,” he said. “Rodney Burrows…”

She nodded.

“Okay, this is the deal,” she said. “You had Rodney Burrows pegged correctly and he was on our radar for a long time, but then he went away on the tax conviction and he’s been quiet ever since. At least we think so. So I need to know if the bureau is going to be embarrassed by anything you are doing.”

Bosch shook his head emphatically.

“Not unless the bureau dropped the ball in ’93. This is strictly a cold case investigation. This guy lives out in Adelanto now and as far as I know he’s been quiet as a mouse.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you on that.”

“So tell me what you’ve got. When did he hit the FBI radar?”

“Well, by the mid-nineties we started watching a lot of these types. You know, militia sympathizers, Posse Comitatus, Christian Identity — all those ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ anti-government hate groups. In the space of two years we had Waco and Ruby Ridge and you couple that with the riots in ’92 right here in L.A. and you sort of have this call to arms that speaks to a lot of these fringe dwellers. Some of them, like your guy, believed the riots constituted the first warning of a coming race war. Mix in your standard anti-government views, stand-your-ground arms accumulation, and a lot of those other ‘ist’ allegiances you mentioned earlier, and you have yourself a loose-form movement. We picked up on this happening in many places across the country. Obviously there were many that didn’t get our notice — the Oklahoma City bombing happened in ’95.”

“So what about Burrows?”

“He and some of his fellow numbskulls formed something they called the WAVE. It was a benign-sounding acronym standing for White American Voices Everywhere. They became part of this national association of groups that wanted to close borders and get ready to defend white America when the race war began.”

“Didn’t Charlie Manson preach the same thing back in the day?”

“He did. But just like somebody should have been watching Manson back in the day, we did start watching Burrows and his group.”

“When?”

“We didn’t get onto them until about ’94, when they started putting leaflets on windshields from L.A. to San Diego — which, by the way, they called Ban Diego.”

“Cute. My case was a year before that.”

“I know. I can’t directly help you there. You asked me what we had on Burrows and it’s all ’94 and on.”

“What were they doing besides printing up leaflets?”

“Nothing much. They had a compound out near Castaic and they shot their guns off and trained recruits and listened to a lot of speed metal on the stereo. Your basic hate group — long on rhetoric but not much else. The boldest thing they ever did was print up a racist manifesto and put out leaflets inviting people to an open house at the training camp. We kept a loose watch on them, had a plant inside the clubhouse, and the determination was that these guys were all talk and no walk. They would not start the war, they would just be cheerleaders when it came.”

“A plant? Did you bug the place?”

“No, we had a CI. One of the members of WAVE got jammed up on something else and agreed to inform.”

“Where’d the money come from for this compound? Did these guys have jobs? What?”

“The summaries I read before coming here described them as very well-funded, but the source of that funding was not determined. These guys were security guards and long-range truckers. It didn’t account for their funding.”

“The robbery I’m talking about netted two hundred sixty thousand. There was another one a few months before that that could have been connected.”

“Well, that could explain it, but I saw nothing about that in the summaries.”

“Was Burrows the top man?”

“No, he was just a worker bee. WAVE was started by a guy named Garret Henley, who was a long-haul trucker. He was the initial recruiter.”

Bosch got out his notebook to write the name down.

“You won’t be able to talk to him,” Walling said. “He died twelve years ago. Killed himself after being indicted for tax evasion. He knew he was going to go away. That’s how we got most of these guys — they stopped paying taxes.”

“Then, who else?” Bosch asked. “Who were Burrows’s known associates? My case involved him and two gunmen.”

Walling reached over and unfolded the newspaper she had put to the side. For the first time Bosch could see she had written notes on the edges of the columns. Walling read her own notes and then flipped the paper closed again.

“The summaries said there were two brothers who were tight with Burrows. Matt and Mike Pollard. Also, if you are looking for a getaway driver, there was a wannabe stock car driver named Stanley Nance in the group. His nickname was ‘Nascar Nance.’ Maybe he was your driver.”

Bosch liked all of this. It seemed to fit. Walling read his excitement.

“Now, before you jump up and start doing an Irish jig, I ran a quick check on these three guys and you’re not going to like what I found,” she said.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Well, Nascar Nance is driving the big oval in the sky. He killed himself in ’96 when he hit a bridge abutment at ninety-five miles an hour on the five. And both the Pollards were sent to federal prison for tax evasion but only one came out alive. Mike Pollard was sent to Coleman, which is in Florida, where he was stabbed to death in the prison library in ’06. Case was never solved and is suspected of being racially motivated.”

“And the other one?”

“Matt Pollard served his time in Lewisburg and paroled out in ’09. He had a five-year tail and reported to the federal parole office in Philadelphia. But he cleared parole two months ago and his whereabouts are currently unknown. These diehard anti-government types like to stay below the radar. They avoid driver’s licenses, Social Security, paying taxes, and so on.”

Bosch frowned and was reminded that Ana Acevedo had likewise dropped off the grid. But then he thought of something that seemed like a discrepancy regarding the men of WAVE.

“Burrows didn’t go to prison until ’06,” he said. “And he was out in twenty-two months.”

“What can I tell you? The process is slow,” Walling said. “I don’t know the details of each case but they went after these guys one at a time, and Burrows came up last, I guess.”

That didn’t sound right to Bosch.

“Okay, but Burrows went up to the country club at Lompoc,” he said. “How does he get Lompoc, and the Pollards get Lewisburg and Coleman? Those are hard places. It sounds like Burrows caught a break.”

Walling nodded.

“You’d have to pull all three cases and see how they lined up differently. You didn’t ask me to do that. You asked about Burrows. Who knows, maybe his offenses were not as extensive. Plus he took a deal, and maybe the other two went to trial. A lot of things can explain the discrepancy.”

“I know, I know. I’m just wondering if he got a payoff for being the confidential informant all those years before.”

Walling shook her head.

“There was nothing in the file I looked at that said anything about substantial assistance being given by the defendant,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Bosch said.

“Either way, you’re now asking things above my pay grade. I don’t have access to CI lists. For obvious reasons, those are under lock and key.”

“Did you write down any of the case numbers? I could talk to the prosecutor.”

“I did.”

“What about the case agent who handled WAVE? Who was that?”

“Nick Yardley. And he’s still in the L.A. office.”

“Think he’d talk to me?”

“He might, but you have to remember, Burrows went to prison on an IRS case. Technically we would only have been assisting. Nick might shine you onto them, and if that happens you can forget it. IRS agents don’t talk to locals.”

“I know.”

“If you talk to Nick, don’t tell him you’ve talked to me. Tell him your information comes from the court file.”

“Of course.”

The waiter came with the food then. Bosch wanted to leave and keep moving with the case but he knew if he was rude to Rachel she might never help him again. He didn’t want to risk that.

They started to eat and he tried some small talk.

“So what’s Jack doing these days?” he asked.

Jack was Jack McEvoy, the former Times reporter that Rachel had been with for the past few years. Bosch knew McEvoy as well.

“He’s doing well,” she said. “He’s happy — and lucky, considering today’s journalism market.”

“He’s still working on that investigative website?”

“He recently jumped to a different one. It’s called Fair Warning. It’s consumer protection investigations and reporting. You should check it out. The government, the newspapers — nobody’s really watching out for Joe Citizen anymore. They do some interesting stuff on the site. And he loves the work again.”

“That’s great. I will check it out. Fair Warning dot com?”

“Dot org. It’s a nonprofit.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look at it.”

Bosch thought about asking her about the tightrope she walked at the bureau by being in a relationship with a reporter, but before he said anything, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He put his fork down and checked it. It was a text from Soto.

Ready to go

A not-so-gentle reminder that the case was waiting. He looked at Walling, who was taking her time spreading cream cheese on a bagel.

“You gotta go, right?” she said without looking up from her work.

“Sort of,” Bosch said.

“Then don’t worry about me. Go.”

“Thanks, Rachel. For everything. I’ll grab the check on the way out.”

“Thank you, Harry.”

Bosch took the English muffin off his plate and started to slide out of the booth.

“Don’t forget this,” Rachel said.

She handed the newspaper across the table. Bosch took it from her and stood up.

“Tell Jack he is lucky.”

“What? You mean about the job?”

“No, Rachel, I mean about you.”