The Overlook

SEVEN

BOSCH AND THE FEDERAL AGENTS stood silently. There was an almost palpable sense of dread hanging in the air in the oncology lab. They had just confirmed that Stanley Kent took thirty-two capsules of cesium from the safe at Saint Agatha’s and then most likely turned them over to persons unknown. Those persons unknown had then executed him up on the Mulholland overlook.

“Thirty-two capsules of cesium,” Bosch said. “How much damage could that do?”

Brenner looked at him somberly.

“We would have to ask the science people but my guess is that it could get the job done,” he said. “If somebody out there wants to send a message, it would be heard loud and clear.”

Bosch suddenly thought of something that didn’t fit with the known set of facts.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “ Stanley Kent ’s radiation rings showed no exposure. How could he have taken all the cesium out of here and not lit up those warning devices like a Christmas tree?”

Brenner shook his head dismissively.

“He obviously used a pig.”

“A what?”

“The pig is what they call the transfer device. It basically looks like a lead mop bucket on wheels. With a secured top, of course. It’s heavy and built low to the ground-like a pig. So they call it a pig.”

“And he could just waltz right in and out of here with something like that?”

Brenner pointed at the clipboard on the desk.

“Inter-hospital transfers of radioactive sources for cancer treatment are not unusual,” he said. “He signed out one source but then took them all. That’s what was unusual, but who was going to open up the pig and check?”

Bosch thought about the indentations he had seen in the floor of the Porsche’s trunk. Something heavy had been carried in the car and was then removed. Now Bosch knew what it was and it was just one more indication of the worst-case scenario.

Bosch shook his head and Brenner thought it was because he was making a judgment about security in the lab.

“Let me tell you something,” the agent said. “Before we came in last year and revamped their security, anybody wearing a doctor’s white coat could have walked right in here and gotten whatever he wanted out of the safe. Security was nothing.”

“I wasn’t making a comment on security. I was-”

“I have to make a call,” Brenner said.

He moved away from the others and pulled out his cell phone. Bosch decided to make his own call. He pulled out his phone, found a corner for privacy and called his partner.

“Ignacio, it’s me. I’m just checking in.”

“Call me Iggy, Harry. What’s happening with you?”

“Nothing good. Kent emptied the safe. All the cesium is gone.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s the stuff you said could be used to make a dirty bomb?”

“That’s the stuff and it looks like he turned over enough of it to do the job. Are you still at the scene?”

“Yeah, and listen, I’ve got a kid here who might’ve been a witness.”

“What do you mean, ‘might’ve’ been a witness? Who is it, a neighbor?”

“No, it’s sort of a screwy story. You know that house that was supposedly Madonna’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, well, she used to own it but doesn’t anymore. I go up there to knock on the door and the guy who lives there now says he didn’t see or hear anything-I’m getting the same thing at every door I knock on. So anyway, I’m leaving when I spot this guy hiding behind these big potted trees in the courtyard. I draw down on him and call backup, you know, thinking maybe he’s our shooter from the overlook. But that’s not what it is. Turns out it’s a kid-twenty years old and just off the bus from Canada -and he thinks Madonna’s still living in the house. He’s got a star map that still lists her as living there and he’s trying to see her or something-like a stalker. He climbed over a wall to get into the courtyard.”

“Did he see the shooting?”

“He claims he didn’t see or hear anything, but I don’t know, Harry. I’m thinking he might’ve been stalking Madonna’s place when the thing went down on the overlook. He then hides and tries to wait it out. Only I find him first.”

Bosch was missing something in the story.

“Why would he hide? Why wouldn’t he just get the hell out of there? We didn’t find the body till three hours after the shooting.”

“Yeah, I know. That part doesn’t make sense. Maybe he was just scared or thought that if he was seen in the vicinity of the body he might get tagged as a suspect or something.”

Bosch nodded. It was a possibility.

“You holding him on the trespass?” he asked.

“Yeah. I talked to the guy who bought the place from Madonna and he’ll work with us. He’ll press charges if we need him to. So don’t worry, we can hold him and work him with it.”

“Good. Take him downtown, put him in a room and warm him up.”

“You got it, Harry.”

“And Ignacio, don’t tell anybody about the cesium.”

“Right. I won’t.”

Bosch closed the phone before Ferras could tell him to call him Iggy again. He listened to the end of Brenner’s conversation. It was obvious that he wasn’t talking to Walling. His manner and tone of voice was deferential. He was talking to a boss.

“According to the log here, seven o’clock,” he said. “That puts the transfer at the overlook at around eight, so we’re talking about a six-and-a-half-hour lead at this point.”

Brenner listened some and then started to speak several times but was repeatedly cut off by the person on the other end of the line.

“Yes, sir,” he finally said. “Yes, sir. We’re on our way back in now.”

He closed the phone and looked at Bosch.

“I’m going back in on the chopper. I have to lead a teleconference debriefing with Washington. I’d take you with me but I think you’d be better off on the ground, chasing the case. I’ll have someone pick up my car later.”

“No problem.”

“Did your partner come up with a witness? Is that what I heard?”

Bosch had to wonder how Brenner had picked that up while conducting his own phone conversation.

“Maybe, but it sounds like a long shot. I’m going downtown to see about that right now.”

Brenner nodded solemnly, then handed Bosch a business card.

“If you get anything, give me a call. All my information is on that. Anything at all, call.”

Bosch took the card and put it in his pocket. He and the agents then left the lab and a few minutes later he watched the federal chopper take off into the black sky. He got in his car and pulled out of the clinic’s parking lot to head south. Before hitting the freeway he gassed up at a station on San Fernando Road.

Traffic coming down into the center of the city was light and he cruised at a steady eighty. He turned the stereo on and picked a CD from the center console without looking at what it was. Five notes into the first song he knew it was a Japanese import from bassist Ron Carter. It was good driving music and he turned it up.

The music helped Bosch smooth out his thoughts. He realized the case was shifting. The feds, at least, were chasing the missing cesium instead of the killers. There was a subtle difference there that Bosch thought was important. He knew that he needed to keep his focus on the overlook and not lose sight at any time of the fact that this was a murder investigation.

“Find the killers, you find the cesium,” he said out loud.

When he got downtown he took the Los Angeles Street exit and parked in the front lot at police headquarters. At this hour nobody would care that he wasn’t a VIP or a member of command staff.

Parker Center was on its last legs. For nearly a decade a new police headquarters had been approved for construction but because of repeated budgetary and political delays the project had only inched toward realization. In the meantime, little had been done to keep the current headquarters from sliding into decrepitude. Now the new building was under way but it was an estimated four years from completion. Many who worked in Parker Center wondered if it could last that long.

The RHD squad room on the third floor was deserted when Bosch got there. He opened his cell phone and called his partner.

“Where are you?”

“Hey, Harry. I’m at SID. I’m getting what I can so I can start putting the murder book together. Are you in the office?”

“I just got here. Where’d you put the wit?”

“I’ve got him cooking in room two. You want to start with him?”

“Might be good to hit him with somebody he hasn’t seen before. Somebody older.”

It was a delicate suggestion. The potential witness was Ferras’s find. Bosch wouldn’t move in on him without his partner’s at least tacit approval. But the situation dictated that someone with Bosch’s experience would be better conducting such an important interview.

“Have at him, Harry. When I get back I’ll watch in the media room. If you need me to come in, just give me the signal.”

“Right.”

“I made fresh coffee in the captain’s office if you want it.”

“Good. I need it. But first tell me about the witness.”

“His name is Jesse Mitford. From Halifax. He’s kind of a drifter. He told me he hitchhiked down here and has been staying in shelters and sometimes up in the hills-when it’s warm enough. That’s about it.”

It was pretty thin but it was a start.

“Maybe he was going to sleep up there in Madonna’s courtyard. That’s why he didn’t split.”

“I didn’t think about that, Harry. You might be right.”

“I’ll be sure to ask him.”

Bosch ended the call, got his coffee mug out of his desk drawer and headed to the RHD captain’s office. There was an anteroom where the secretary’s desk was located as well as a table with a coffeemaker. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee hit Bosch as he entered and that alone almost gave him the caffeine charge he needed. He poured a cup, dropped a buck in the basket and then headed back to his desk.

The squad room was designed with long rows of facing desks so that partners sat across from each other. The design afforded no personal or professional privacy. Most of the other detective bureaus in the city had gone to cubicles with sound and privacy walls but at Parker Center no money was spent on improvements because of the impending demolition.

Since Bosch and Ferras were the newest additions to the squad their desk tandem was located at the end of a line in a windowless corner where the air circulation was bad and they would be furthest from the exit in the case of an emergency like an earthquake.

Bosch’s work space was neat and clean, just as he had left it. He noticed a backpack and a plastic evidence bag on his partner’s desk across from him. He reached over and grabbed the backpack first. He opened it and found it contained mostly clothing and other personal items belonging to the potential witness. There was a book called The Stand by Stephen King and a bag with toothpaste and a toothbrush in it. It all amounted to the meager belongings of a meager existence.

He returned the backpack and reached across for the evidence bag next. It contained a small amount of U.S. currency, a set of keys, a thin wallet and a Canadian passport. It also contained a folded “Homes of the Stars” map that Bosch knew was the kind sold on street corners all around Hollywood. He unfolded it and located the overlook off Mulholland Drive above Lake Hollywood. Just to the left of the location there was a black star with the number 23 in it. It had been circled with an ink pen. He checked the map’s index, and star number 23 said, Madonna’s Hollywood Home.

The map had obviously not been updated with Madonna’s movements and Bosch suspected that few of the star locations and their attendant celebrity listings were accurate. This explained why Jesse Mitford had been stalking a house where Madonna no longer lived.

Bosch refolded the map, put all the property back in the evidence bag and returned it to his partner’s desk. He then got a legal pad and a rights waiver out of a drawer and stood up to go to interview room 2, which was located in a hallway off the back of the squad room.

Jesse Mitford looked younger than his years. He had curly, dark hair and ivory-white skin. He had a stubble of chin hair that looked like it might have taken him his whole life to grow. He had silver rings piercing one nostril and one eyebrow. He looked alert and scared. He was seated at a small table in the small interview room. The room smelled of body odor. Mitford was sweating, which of course was the object. Bosch had checked the thermostat in the hallway before coming in. Ferras had set the temperature in the interview room to eighty-two.

“Jesse, how are you doing?” Bosch asked as he took the empty seat across from him.

“Uh, not so good. It’s hot in here.”

“Really?”

“Are you my lawyer?”

“No, Jesse, I’m your detective. My name’s Harry Bosch. I’m a homicide detective and I am working the overlook case.”

Bosch put both his legal pad and his coffee mug down on the table. He noticed that Mitford still had handcuffs on. It was a nice touch by Ferras to keep the kid confused, scared and worried.

“I told the Mexican detective I didn’t want to talk anymore. I want a lawyer.”

Bosch nodded.

“He’s Cuban American, Jesse,” he said. “And you don’t get a lawyer. Lawyers are for U.S. citizens only.”

This was a lie but Bosch was banking on the twenty-year-old’s not knowing this.

“You’re in trouble, kid,” he continued. “It’s one thing to be stalking an old girlfriend or boyfriend. It’s something else with a celebrity. This is a celebrity town in a celebrity country, Jesse, and we take care of our own. I don’t know what you’ve got up there in Canada but the penalties here for what you were doing tonight are pretty stiff.”

Mitford shook his head as if he could ward off his problems that way.

“But I was told that she doesn’t even live there anymore. Madonna, I mean. So I wasn’t really stalking her, then. It would just be trespassing.”

Now Bosch shook his head.

“It’s about intent, Jesse. You thought she might be there. You had a map that said she was there. You even circled the spot. So as far as the law goes, that constitutes stalking a celebrity.”

“Then why do they sell maps to stars’ homes?”

“And why do bars have parking lots when drunk driving is illegal? We’re not going to play that game, Jesse. The point is, there’s nothing on the map that says anything about it being okay to jump over a wall and trespass, you know what I mean?”

Mitford dropped his eyes to his manacled wrists and sadly nodded.

“Tell you what, though,” Bosch said. “You can cheer up because things aren’t as bad as they seem. You’ve got stalking and trespassing charges here, but I think we can probably get this all fixed up and taken care of if you agree to cooperate with me.”

Mitford leaned forward.

“But like I told that Mexi-that Cuban detective, I didn’t see anything.”

Bosch waited a long moment before responding.

“I don’t care what you told him. You’re dealing with me now, son. And I think you’re holding back on me.”

“No, I’m not. I swear to God.”

He held his hands open and as wide as the cuffs allowed in a pleading gesture. But Bosch wasn’t buying it. The kid was too young to be a liar capable of convincing Bosch. He decided to go right at him.

“Let me tell you something, Jesse. My partner is good and he’s going places in the department. No doubt about that. But right now he’s a baby. He’s been a detective for about as long as you’ve been growing that peach fuzz on your chin. Me, I’ve been around and that means I’ve been around a lot of liars. Sometimes I think all I know are liars. And, Jesse, I can tell. You’re lying to me and nobody lies to me.”

“No! I-”

“And so, what you’ve got here is about thirty seconds to start talking to me or I’m just going to take you down and book you into county lockup. I’m sure there’s going to be somebody waiting in there who will have a guy like you singing O Canada! into the mike before sunup. You see, that’s what I meant about there being stiff penalties for stalking.”

Mitford stared down at his hands on the table. Bosch waited and twenty seconds slowly went by. Finally, Bosch stood up.

“Okay, Jesse, stand up. We’re going.”

“Wait, wait, wait!”

“For what? I said stand up! Let’s go. This is a murder investigation and I’m not wasting time on-”

“All right, all right, I’ll tell you. I saw the whole thing, okay? I saw everything.”

Bosch studied him for a moment.

“You’re talking about the overlook?” he asked. “You saw the shooting on the overlook?”

“I saw everything, man.”

Bosch pulled his chair out and sat back down.