The Drop

13

Clayton Pell agreed to talk to Bosch but only if Dr. Stone remained present. Harry had no problem with that and thought that having Stone on hand might be helpful during the interview. He only advised her that Pell might become a witness in an eventual trial and as such Bosch would conduct the interview in a methodical and linear fashion.

An orderly walked Pell into the interview room, where three chairs had been set up, one facing the other two. Bosch introduced himself and shook Pell’s hand without hesitation. Pell was a small man no more than five foot two and a hundred ten pounds, and Bosch knew that victims of sexual abuse during childhood often suffered from stunted growth. Disrupted psychological growth affected physical growth.

Bosch pointed Pell to his seat and cordially asked if he needed anything.

“I could use a smoke,” Pell said.

When he sat, he brought his legs up and crossed them on the seat. It seemed like a childlike thing to do.

“I could use one, too, but we’re not going to break the rules today,” Bosch said.

“That’s too bad, then.”

Stone had suggested that they set the three seats up around a table to make it less formal but Bosch had said no. He also choreographed the seating arrangement so that both he and Stone would be left and right of Pell’s center view line, which meant he would have to constantly look back and forth between them. Observing eye movement would be a good way for Bosch to measure sincerity and veracity. Pell had become a tragic figure in Stone’s estimation but Bosch held no such sympathy. Pell’s traumatic history and childlike dimensions didn’t matter. He was now a predator. Just ask the nine-year-old boy he had pulled into his van. Bosch planned to constantly remind himself that predators hid themselves and that they lied and waited for their opponents to reveal weaknesses. He wouldn’t make a mistake with Pell.

“Why don’t we get started here,” Bosch said. “If you don’t mind I will take written notes as we talk.”

“A’right by me,” Pell said.

Bosch pulled out his notebook. It had an LAPD detective’s badge embossed on its leather cover. It had been a gift from his daughter, who had had it custom-made through a friend in Hong Kong whose father was in the leather business. The embossing was complete with his badge number—2997. She’d given it to him at Christmas. It was one of his most treasured possessions because it had come from her, but also because he knew it served a valuable purpose. Every time he flipped it open to jot down a note, he was showing the badge to his interview subjects and reminding them that the power and might of the state was before them.

“So what’s this about?” Pell asked in a high, nasal voice. “Doc didn’t tell me nothin’ about nothin’.”

Stone did not tell him not to call her Doc.

“It’s about a murder, Clayton,” Bosch said. “From way back when you were just a boy of eight years old.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no murder, sir.”

The voice was grating and Bosch wondered if it had always been that way or if it was the by-product of the prison attack.

“I know that. And you should know that you are not suspected in this crime in any way.”

“Then why come to me?”

“Good question, and I’m going to just answer it straight, Clayton. You are in this room because your blood and your DNA were found on the victim’s body.”

Pell shot straight up out of his chair.

“Okay, I’m out of here.”

He turned to head toward the door.

“Clay!” Stone called out. “Hear him out! You are not a suspect! You were eight years old. He just wants to know what you know. Please!”

He looked down at her but pointed at Bosch.

“You can trust this guy but I don’t. The cops don’t do anybody any favors. Only themselves.”

Stone stood up to make her pitch.

“Clayton, please. Give it a chance.”

Pell reluctantly sat back down. Stone followed and he stared at her while refusing to look at Bosch.

“We think the killer had your blood on him,” Bosch said. “And it somehow got transferred to the victim. We don’t think you had anything to do with the crime.”

“Why don’t you just get it over with,” he replied, holding his wrists out together for cuffing.

“Clay, please,” Stone said.

He waved both hands in an enough already gesture. He was small enough that he could completely turn his body in his seat and put both legs over the chair’s left arm, giving Bosch the cold shoulder like a child ignoring his parent. He folded his arms across his chest and Bosch could see the top edge of a tattoo peeking out of his collar on the back of his neck.

“Clayton,” Stone said sternly. “Don’t you remember where you were when you were eight? Don’t you remember what you’ve told me over and over?”

Pell tucked his chin down toward his chest and then relented.

“Of course I do.”

“Then answer Detective Bosch’s questions.”

He milked it for ten seconds and then nodded.

“Okay. What?”

Just as Bosch was about to ask a question, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Pell heard it.

“If you answer that, I am fucking walking out of here.”

“Don’t worry, I hate cell phones.”

Bosch waited for the buzzing to stop and then proceeded.

“Tell me about where you were and how you were living when you were eight years old, Clayton.”

Pell turned back straight in his chair to face Bosch.

“I was living with a monster. A guy who liked to beat the shit out of me whenever my mother wasn’t around.”

He paused. Bosch waited and then prompted.

“What else, Clayton?”

“He decided that just beatin’ me up wasn’t good enough. He decided he liked for me to suck him off, too. A couple times a week. So that’s how I was living, Detective.”

“And this man was named Johnny?”

“Where did you get that?”

Pell looked at Stone, assuming she had betrayed his confidence.

“The name’s in your PSI reports,” Bosch said quickly. “I read them. You mention a guy named Johnny in them. Is that who we’re talking about here?”

“I just call him that. Now, I mean. He reminded me of Jack Nicholson in that Stephen King movie. The ‘Here’s Johnny’ guy, chasing after the boy with an ax all the time. That was what it was like for me, only no ax. He didn’t need no ax.”

“What about his real name? Did you know it?”

“Nope, never did.”

“Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure. The guy fucked me up for life. If I knew his name, I’d remember it. The only thing I remember was his nickname, what everybody called him.”

“What was it?”

A small, thin smile played on Pell’s lips. He had something everyone wanted and he was going to work it to his advantage. Bosch could tell. All those years in prison, he had learned to play the angles.

“What do I get for it?” he asked.

Bosch was ready.

“You might get to put the guy who tortured you away for good.”

“What makes you think he’s even still alive?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Just a guess. The reports say your mother had you when she was seventeen. So she was about twenty-five when she took up with this guy. My guess is that he wasn’t too much older than her. Twenty-two years ago. . he’s probably in his fifties and he’s probably still out there doing what he does.”

Pell stared down at the floor and Bosch wondered if he was seeing a memory from the time he was in the man’s control.

Stone cleared her voice and spoke.

“Clay, remember how we’ve talked about evil and whether people are born that way or if it is given to them? About how acts can be evil but the person committing them is not?”

Pell nodded.

“This man is evil. Look what he did to you. And Detective Bosch believes he committed other evil acts on other victims.”

Pell nodded again.

“That fucking belt had letters on the buckle. He used to hit me with that buckle. The fucker. After a while I just didn’t want to get hit anymore. It was easier just to give him what he wanted. .”

Bosch waited. There was no need to ask another question. Stone seemed to sense it as well. After a long moment Pell nodded a third time and spoke.

“Everybody called him Chill. Including my mother.”

Bosch wrote it down.

“You said the belt buckle had letters on it. You mean like initials? What were they?”

“C. H.”

Bosch wrote it down. His adrenaline started to kick in. He might not have a full name but he was getting close. For a split second an image came to him. His fist raised and knocking on a door. No, pounding on a door. A door that would be opened by the man known as Chill.

Pell continued to talk unbidden.

“I thought of Chill last year when I saw all that stuff on the news about the Grim Sleeper. Chill had photos like that guy, too.”

The Grim Sleeper was the name given to a serial killer suspect and the task force investigation that sought him. A single killer was suspected in multiple murders of women, but there were large spaces of time between killings and it was as though he had gone to sleep and was hibernating. When a suspect was identified and captured the year before, investigators found hundreds of photos of women in his possession. Most of the women were naked and in sexually suggestive poses in the shots. The investigation was ongoing as to who the women were and what had happened to them.

“He had photos of women?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, the women he’d fucked. Naked pictures. His trophies. He took pictures of my mother. I saw ’em. He had one of those cameras where the picture just came right out so he didn’t have to worry about taking film to the drugstore and getting found out. Back before they had digital.”

“A Polaroid.”

“Yeah, right. Polaroid.”

“It is not unusual,” Stone said. “For men who physically hurt women or not. It’s a form of control. Ownership. Skins on the wall, keeping score. A symptom of a very controlling personality. In today’s world of digital cameras and Internet porn, you see this more and more.”

“Yeah, well then, I guess Chill was a pioneer,” Pell said. “He didn’t have no computer. He kept his pictures in a shoe box. That’s how we moved away from him.”

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

Pell tightened his lips for a moment before answering.

“He took a picture of me with his dick in my mouth. And he put it in his shoebox. One day I stole it and left it where my mom would see it. We moved out that day.”

“Were there other photos of boys or men in that shoebox?” Bosch asked.

“I remember seeing one other. It was a kid like me but I didn’t know who it was.”

Bosch wrote down a few more notes. Pell’s information that Chill was apparently a pansexual predator was a key part of the emerging profile. He then asked if Pell could remember where they lived when he and his mother were with the man called Chill. He could only remember that they were close to Travel Town at Griffith Park, because his mother used to take him there to ride on the trains.

“Could you walk there or did you drive?”

“We took a taxi and I remember it was close. We went there a lot. I liked being on those little trains.”

It was a good note. Bosch knew Travel Town was on the north side of the park and it probably meant Pell had lived with Chill in North Hollywood or Burbank. It would help narrow things.

He then asked for a description of Chill, and Pell only described him as being white, tall and muscular.

“Did he have a job?”

“Not really. I think he was like a handyman or something. He had a lot of tools he kept in his truck.”

“What kind of truck?”

“Van, actually. Ford Econoline. That was where he made me do things to him.”

And a van would be the kind of vehicle Pell would use later to commit the same sort of crime. Bosch didn’t mention this, of course.

“How old would you say Chill was back then?” he asked.

“No idea. You’re probably right about what you said before. About five years older than my mother.”

“You don’t happen to have a photo of him with your things or in storage or something?”

Pell laughed and looked at Bosch like he thought he was an imbecile.

“You think I’d keep his picture around? I don’t even have a picture of my mother, man.”

“Sorry, had to ask. Did you ever see this guy with any women other than your mother?”

“You mean like to have sex with?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Clayton, what else do you remember about him?”

“I just remember I tried to stay away from him.”

“Do you think you could identify him?”

“What, now? After all these years?”

Bosch nodded.

“I don’t know. But I won’t ever forget the way he looked back then.”

“Do you remember anything else about the place where you lived with him? Anything that might help me find him?”

Pell thought about it and then shook his head.

“No, man, just what I said.”

“Did he have pets?”

“No, but he beat me like a dog. I guess I was his pet.”

Bosch glanced over at Stone to see if she had anything.

“What about hobbies?” she asked.

“I think his hobby was filling up that shoebox,” Pell said.

“But you never saw any of the other women from the pictures, right?” Bosch asked.

“But that didn’t mean anything. You could tell most of the pictures were taken in the van. He had an old mattress back there. He wasn’t bringing any of them home, you know?”

It was good information. Bosch wrote it all down.

“You said you saw one photo of a boy. Was that taken in the van, too?”

Pell didn’t respond at first. He had committed his own evil acts in a van and the connection was obvious.

“I don’t remember,” he finally said.

Bosch moved on.

“Tell me something, Clayton. If I catch this guy and he goes on trial, would you be willing to testify to the things you’ve told me today?”

Pell considered the question.

“What would I get?” he asked.

“I told you,” Bosch said. “You’d get satisfaction. You’d help put this guy away for the rest of his life.”

“That’s nothing.”

“Well, I can’t prom—”

“Look what he did to me! Everything is because of him!”

He pointed to his chest as he yelled it. The raw emotion in his outburst was full of an animal ferocity that belied his diminutive frame. And it got through to Bosch. He realized how powerful it might be if it was put on exhibit in a trial. If he yelled out the same way and the same thing in front of a jury, it would be devastating for the defense.

“Clayton, I’m going to find this guy,” he said. “And you’ll get the chance to tell him that to his face. It may help you with the rest of your life.”

“The rest of my life? Well, that’s great. Thanks for that.”

The sarcasm was unmistakable. Bosch was about to offer a comeback when there was a sharp knock on the interview room door. Stone got up to open it, and another therapist stood there. She whispered to Stone and then Stone turned to Bosch.

“There are two police officers at the front gate, asking for you.”

Bosch thanked Pell for his time and said he would be in touch about the investigation. He headed out to the gate, pulling his phone as he went. He saw that he had ignored four calls, one from his partner, two from a 213 number he didn’t recognize and the last from Kiz Rider.

The two uniformed cops were from Van Nuys Division. They said they had been sent by the OCP.

“You’re not answering your phone or the radio in your car,” the older one said. “You’re supposed to contact a Lieutenant Rider in the chief’s office. She says it’s urgent.”

Bosch thanked them and explained that he was in an important interview with his phone turned off. As soon as they walked away he called Rider and she answered right away.

“Harry, why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Because I was in the middle of an interview. I usually don’t stop to take calls. How’d you find me?”

“Through your partner, who is answering his phone. What does that halfway house have to do with the Irving case?”

There was no getting around the answer.

“Nothing. It’s another case.”

There was silence while she worked to contain her frustration and fury with him.

“Harry, the chief of police told you to work the Irving matter as a priority. Why would you—”

“Look, I’m waiting on the autopsy. There’s nothing I can do about Irving until I get the autopsy and get going from there.”

“Well, guess what?”

Bosch now understood where those two 213 calls he missed had come from.

“What?”

“The autopsy started a half hour ago. If you leave now, you might catch the end of it.”

“Is Chu there?”

“As far as I know he is. He’s supposed to be.”

“I’m on my way.”

Embarrassed, he disconnected with no further discussion.