The Crossing

23

Bosch looked at the crime scene photos first. It was the closest he could come to being called to the scene, observing the details, and conducting the on-site investigation.

James Allen’s body was found fully clothed and propped against the back wall of an auto-repair and sales garage in an alley at Santa Monica Boulevard and El Centro. The alley was like most any other alley in a city where the infrastructure was crumbling, in a state where the infrastructure was crumbling. It was a patchwork of asphalt spot repairs and loose gravel over a crumbling base of decades-old concrete.

Environmental shots of the spot where the body was discovered showed this part of the alley to be hidden well by the garage on one side and the back side of an apartment building on the other. The only windows on the apartment building that would give a view of the alley were glazed bathroom windows. Just another fifty feet up the alley going in from El Centro it opened wider to accommodate a large parking lot behind a four-floor brick loft building. The immediate impression Bosch got from viewing the photos was that the killer who left Allen’s body there knew the alley and knew he could dump the body at the end behind the car shop without being seen. It was possible he also knew that the body would be discovered the following morning when workers in the loft building entered the alley to reach their parking lot.

Next Bosch studied the close-up shots of the body. The victim was clothed in a pair of gray running shorts and a pink collared shirt. No shoes, but on the feet were the kind of shoe liners worn by women to protect against blisters when wearing shoes without socks or stockings. On his head was a stocking cap that would have been worn under a wig. The shirt collar helped hide the braided wire that was cinched around the neck. The wire had been pulled so tight that it had cut into the skin. Bleeding was minimal because the heart had stopped pumping shortly after the wire cut the skin.

The victim’s hairless legs were stretched out into the alley and his hands were lying in his lap. Close-up shots of the hands revealed no broken fingernails or blood. It made Bosch wonder if Allen had been somehow prevented from fighting against the wire as it was pulled tight around his neck.

“What is it?” Soto asked.

She was sitting in the passenger seat next to him and had been silent as Bosch went through the photos. She had smuggled her beer out of the bar and had been sipping it as she watched Bosch study the book.

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

“I’ve watched you look through a murder book before,” she said. “I can tell when you see something that doesn’t add up.”

Bosch nodded.

“Well, there is no trauma to the hands. No blood, no broken fingernails. Somebody pulls a wire around your neck and you’d think your hands would go to your neck and start fighting the wire.”

“So what is that telling you?”

“Well, either that he wasn’t conscious when he was choked out or something or someone was holding his hands down. There’s no sign of binding marks on the wrists, so...”

He didn’t finish.

“What? No sign of binding means what?”

“That maybe there were two.”

“Two killers?”

“One to hold him down and control his hands, one to work the wire. There are other things, too.”

“I don’t think Karim and Stotter have tumbled to that. What other things?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Guy’s feet. No shoes but he’s wearing these liner socks.”

“They’re called Peds.”

“Okay, Peds. I don’t see any abrasions on the legs or anywhere else on the body from it being dragged.”

Soto leaned across the center console to look closer at the photo Bosch was looking at.

“Okay,” she said.

“The body is propped against the wall,” he said. “Presumably it was removed from a car and put there. It was carried. The victim’s not a big guy. Sure, it could’ve been done by one person, but still. One person carrying him from a vehicle to that spot? I don’t know. It gives me pause, Lucia.”

Soto just nodded after leaning back into her seat and taking another pull on her bottle.

The photos were contained in plastic sleeves with three holes that allowed them to be secured by the three rings of the binder. Bosch flipped back and forth between photos, double-checking his statements. He then took his phone out and took a picture of one of the photos — a midrange shot that showed the body in its entirety slumped against the graffiti-covered rear wall of the car shop.

“Harry, you can’t,” Soto said.

He knew what she meant. If a photo of a crime scene photo turned up in court or anywhere else, it would be obvious that Bosch had had access to the murder book. That could spawn an investigation that would lead back to Soto.

“I know,” Bosch said. “I’m just taking it to place the body on the wall. So I’ll know when I check out the alley. I want to get the location right, and this graffiti will help. After I go by there and check things out, I will destroy the photo. How’s that?”

“Okay, I guess.”

Bosch moved on to the next set of photos. These were taken inside room 6 at the Haven House. This was when the room was still crowded with James Allen’s belongings. There were clothes in the closet, several pairs of shoes and high heels on the floor. Two wigs — one blond, one brunette — on stands on the bureau. There were several candles in the room — on the bureau, on both bed tables, and on the shelf above the headboard of the bed. Also on the shelf was a large clear plastic container half full of condoms. The brand label on the container was Rainbow Pride. The label advertised that the container held three hundred lubricated condoms in six different colors. Bosch took out his notebook and wrote down the details to give to Haller later. He noted that Soto’s observation when reporting on the photos the day before was correct. The condom container was similar to the candy containers he remembered seeing in doctors’ offices and at convenience store cash registers.

Bosch closely scanned the photos of the motel room for any sign of a cell phone but didn’t see one. He knew there had to be one somewhere, because Da’Quan Foster had told Bosch during the interview at county jail that he had called Allen to arrange to meet him the night of the Lexi Parks killing.

Bosch flipped over to section five of the murder book, which he knew would contain the property report. He studied the lists of items retrieved by investigators at both crime scenes — the alley and the motel room where Foster lived. There was no mention of a phone on either list.

The conclusion: The killer had taken Allen’s phone because the phone contained a record of contact with him.

Bosch quickly went through the book to see if Karim and Stotter had subpoenaed any phone records. There were none and no record that a subpoena had been written or filed, and this led Bosch to believe that Allen either used a legit phone that was registered to someone else or used a throwaway that would be impossible to procure records for without either the phone or its number and service provider in hand.

Bosch made a note about going back to Da’Quan Foster and getting the number he used to contact Allen. That would be a start in tracing Allen’s phone activities.

“Sorry,” Bosch said.

“What are you talking about?” Soto said.

“I’m sure you weren’t planning on spending your evening sitting in my car.”

“It’s okay. Things don’t really get going in there until later. That’s when people start dancing on the bar and taking off their clothes.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious.”

“Oh, then I’ll hurry up here so you don’t miss that.”

“Maybe you should stay so you don’t miss it. Maybe loosen you up some, Harry.”

Bosch glanced at her and then back at the book. He was looking for the autopsy report.

“You think I’m too stiff, huh?”

“Well, around me. I think you always thought I was too fragile for the work. Deep down, I think you think it’s men’s work.”

“No, not true. For a long time my daughter wanted to do what you do. What I did. I didn’t discourage it.”

“But now she wants to be a profiler, right?”

“I think, but you never know.”

“She probably got the same message I got from you. ‘You are not suited for this.’”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’m old-fashioned. I kind of hate the idea of women seeing the evil men do. Something like that.”

He found the autopsy. He had read a thousand autopsy reports in his time. He knew the form of the document by heart and that form had barely changed in the last four decades. He quickly paged through to the measurements of the body. He didn’t need any of the conclusions. He just wanted to know what the victim weighed.

“Here it is,” he said. “Guy weighed a buck and a half. That’s not a lot but I’m thinking a lone killer drags a hundred fifty pounds. He doesn’t carry it.”

“I’ll tell Ali and Mike,” Soto said.

“No, you can’t. You never had this conversation.”

“Right, right.”

Bosch checked his watch. They had already been in the car an hour. He would have liked nothing more than to spend several hours scouring the murder book. He had yet to look at any records from the earlier murder, in which the victim was left in the same alley. But he knew he had to let Soto go soon. She had already gone above and beyond the call of duty to a former partner. Especially one who was no longer a cop.

“Let me just take a quick run through the rest of this and then I’ll get you out of here,” he said.

“It’s okay, Harry,” Soto said. “You know, after you walked out the door of the squad, I thought I’d never get a chance to see you work again. I like this. I learn from you.”

“What, just sitting there watching me read a murder book?”

“Yes. I learn what you think is important, how you put things together, make conclusions. You remember you told me once that all the answers are usually in the murder book. We just don’t see them.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah, I remember.”

He was looking at James Allen’s lengthy arrest record. It was six pages in the book. He scanned them quickly because they were routinely repetitive with several prostitution and loitering arrests plus a few drug possession busts spanning the last seven years. It was a very common rap sheet for a prostitute. Several of the arrests were suspended or not prosecuted as Allen was initially diverted into pre-trial sex-worker and drug-rehab programs. Once that string was played out, his arrests started resulting in convictions and jail time. Never anything in a state correctional facility, always short stints in county jail. Thirty days here, forty-five there, the jail becoming not so much a deterrent as a revolving door — the sad norm for a recidivist sex worker.

The only unusual thing about Allen’s rap sheet was his last arrest — a loitering-with-intent-to-commit-prostitution bust. What caught Bosch’s eye was that the arrest came fourteen months prior to his death and had resulted in a nolle pros — meaning no charges were ever filed against him. Allen was simply released.

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said.

He flipped to the front of the murder book and scanned the crime report and then the first summary filed by Karim and Stotter.

“What is it?” Soto asked.

“This guy hadn’t been arrested in over a year,” Bosch said as he was reading.

“So?”

“Well, he was sort of camped out there on Santa Monica...”

“So?”

Bosch flipped back to the rap sheet and turned the book so she could see it. He started flipping through the pages.

“This guy gets busted three or four times a year for five years and then nothing for the last fourteen months before he gets killed,” he said. “That makes me think he had a guardian angel.”

“What do you mean, someone in the LAPD watching out for him?”

“Yeah, that he was working for somebody. But there’s nothing in here about him being a snitch. No CI number, no report.”

There were protocols for dealing with confidential informants, including in the event that an informant was murdered. But there was nothing in the murder book that clearly indicated that James Allen was an informant.

“Maybe he just got lucky and avoided arrest in that last year,” Soto said. “I mean, arrests have been down across the board the last year. All these shootings with cops and Ferguson and Baltimore and all of that, the uniforms are doing the minimum required. Nobody’s proactive anymore.”

“Do the math,” Bosch said. “These fourteen months go back way before Baltimore, way before Ferguson.”

Bosch shook his head. He had now counted seventeen arrests in five years for Allen on the rap sheet, then more than a year of clean living.

“I think he was working for somebody,” he said. “Off book.”

It was a violation of department policy for an officer to work a snitch without registering the individual with a supervisor and entering the name in the CI Tracking System database. But Bosch knew it regularly occurred. Snitches were procured over time and often used in test situations. Still, fourteen months seemed like a long time to test whether Allen would be a reliable informant.

Stotter and Karim had pulled all of the arrest reports and Bosch started going through these. The names of arresting officers were not on the abbreviated summaries but their unit call signs were listed. He noted that one number was the same on three of Allen’s last five arrests before the fourteen months of non-activity. It was 6-Victor-55. Hollywood Division was denoted by the 6, Victor meant Vice, and 55 indicated it was a two-officer undercover team. He wrote it down on a page of his notebook, then wrote it again on the next page. He tore the second page out and handed it to Soto.

“I think these are probably the guys that were working him,” he said. “Next time you’re on the company computer, see if you can get me their names out of Hollywood Vice. I want to talk to them.”

She looked at the number, then folded the piece of paper and put it into the pocket of her jeans.

“Sure.”

Bosch closed the murder book and handed it to her. She returned it to the red tote bag.

“You sure you can get that back without causing a stir?” he asked.

“They’ll never know,” she said.

“That’s good. And thanks, Lucia. It’s going to help a lot.”

“Anytime. You want to go back in and get another beer?”

Bosch thought for a moment and then shook his head.

“Nah, I got the vibe on this thing. I should stay with it.”

“Big Mo, huh?”

“Yeah, I got momentum back — thanks to you.”

“Okay, Harry, roll with it. Stay safe.”

“You, too.”

She opened the door and got out. Bosch started the engine but didn’t move the car until he watched her walk safely through the back door of the bar.