The Wrong Side of Goodbye

12

Back in his car Bosch sat still for a moment and felt guilty about not going to Foothill Division with Bella Lourdes to talk to the detective handling sexual batteries. He was putting his private investigation in front of his work for the town and it was the Screen Cutter case that was more pressing. He thought about calling Lourdes and saying he was on his way, but the truth was, Lourdes could handle it. She was going to another police station to confer with another detective. It wasn’t a two-person job. Instead he pulled out of the parking lot and started to cruise.

In the course of the investigation Bosch had been to each of the residences where the Screen Cutter had attacked women. These visits came as each case was linked to a serial rapist. None of the victims still lived in the homes, and access to them was difficult to arrange and brief. In one case the victim agreed to return to the premises with the detectives to walk them through the logistics of the crime.

Now for the first time Bosch cruised by each of the homes in the chronological order of the assaults. He wasn’t really sure what he might gain from this but he knew it would help keep the investigation churning in his mind. That was important. He didn’t want the Vance investigation to crowd out his resolve to find the Screen Cutter.

It took him no more than fifteen minutes to make the circuit. At the last house he stopped at the curb in front, easily finding parking because it was a street-sweeping day and one side of the street was clear. He reached under the seat and pulled out the old Thomas Brothers map book. San Fernando was small enough to fit on one page of the book. Bosch had previously charted the locations of the rapes on the page and now studied it once again.

There was no discernible pattern to the locations. Bosch and Lourdes had already exhaustively looked for commonalities: repairmen, postal workers, meter readers, and so on who might connect the victims or their addresses or neighborhoods. But the effort failed to pay off with a connection to all four of the victims or their addresses.

Lourdes believed that each of the victims had somehow come into visual contact with the rapist while away from her home and then was followed during the stalking phase of the crime. But Bosch was unconvinced. San Fernando was a tiny town. The idea that the rapist would lock on to a potential victim in one location and follow her to another stretched believability when four out of four times this protocol led to an address in little San Fernando. Bosch believed the victims were somehow acquired when the rapist saw them in or just outside their homes.

He turned and studied the front facade of the house where the Screen Cutter was last known to have attacked. It was a small postwar house with a front porch and a single-car garage. The rapist had cut the screen on a rear window in an unused bedroom. Bosch could see there was perfect cover from the street.

A shadow swooped by his side window and Bosch turned to see a post office van coast up to the curb in front of his car. The mailman got out and headed toward the front door, where there was a mail slot. He casually glanced toward Bosch’s car, recognized himbehind the wheel, and held a middle finger up his whole way to the door. His name was Mitchell Maron and he had briefly been a suspect in the rapes as well as the subject of a backfired attempt to surreptitiously collect his DNA.

It had occurred at the Starbucks on Truman a month earlier. When Bosch and Lourdes found out that Maron delivered mail on a route that included three of the four victims’ homes, they decided the quickest way to identify or eliminate him as a suspect was to get his DNA and compare it to that from the rapist. They watched him for two days and, while he did nothing that engendered suspicion, he did stop on his morning breaks at the Starbucks, where he drank tea and ate a breakfast sandwich.

In a bit of improvising, Lourdes followed Maron into the coffee shop on the third day, purchased an iced tea, and then sat at an outside table next to the mailman. When he was finished eating he wiped his mouth with a napkin, stuffed it into the empty paper bag his sandwich had come in, and tossed it into a nearby trash can. As he headed back to his mail van, Lourdes took a position guarding the trash can from being used by other patrons. When she saw Maron jump into the van, she removed the top of the trash can and looked down at the paper bag he had just discarded. She put on latex gloves and pulled out a plastic evidence bag to collect the possible DNA specimen. Bosch emerged from the follow car and pulled his phone so he could get a video of the collecting of the bag in case DNA from it was ever introduced in court. The courts had upheld the validity of surreptitious collection of DNA from public locations. He needed to document where the specimen was collected as well.

The unforeseen problem was that Maron had left his cell phone on his table and realized it just as he was about to back out of his parking spot. He jumped back out of his van and went to retrievethe phone. Coming across Bosch and Lourdes collecting his discarded debris, he said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

At that point, knowing that Maron could flee, the detectives had to treat him as a suspect. They asked him to come to the station to answer questions and he angrily agreed. During the ensuing interview he denied any knowledge of the rapes. He acknowledged knowing three of the victims by name but said that was because he delivered their mail.

While Bosch handled the interview, Lourdes was able to round up the four known victims and get them to come in for audiovisual lineups. Because the rapist had worn a mask during each assault, the detectives were hoping an identification might be made by one of the victims recognizing his voice, hands, or eyes.

Four hours after the incident at the coffee shop Maron voluntarily but sullenly stood in a lineup that was viewed separately by all four women. He held his hands out and read sentences said by the rapist during the assaults. None of them identified him as their assailant.

Maron was released that day and his innocence confirmed a week later when DNA from the napkin he wiped his mouth with was deemed no match to the DNA of the rapist. The chief of police sent him a letter apologizing for the incident and thanking him for his cooperation.

Now, after pushing the mail through the slot, Maron walked back toward his van and then made a sudden turn toward Bosch’s car. Harry lowered the window to accept the verbal confrontation.

“Hey, I want you to know, I hired a lawyer,” Maron said. “I’m going to sue all your asses for false arrest.”

Bosch nodded like the threat was just par for the course.

“I hope it’s a contingency deal,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Maron said.

“I hope you’re not paying your lawyer. Put it on contingency; that means he gets paid only if he wins. Because you aren’t going to win, Mitchell. If he’s telling you anything else, he’s lying.”

“Bullshit.”

“You agreed to come in. There was no arrest. We even let you drive the mail van in so nothing would get stolen. You don’t have a case and the only one who will make book are the lawyers. Think about that.”

Maron leaned down and put his hand on the Jeep’s windowsill.

“So I’m just supposed to let it go, then,” he said. “I felt like I’m the one who got raped and it’s just ‘never mind.’”

“Not even close, Mitchell,” Bosch said. “You say that to one of the real victims and they’d put you in your place. What you went through was a shitty couple of hours. There’s no end to what they’re going through.”

Maron slapped the sill and stood up straight.

“Fuck you!”

He stalked back to his van and took off, the wheels screeching. The effect was undercut when sixty feet later he had to hit the brakes to make the delivery to the next house down.

Bosch’s phone rang and he saw it was Lourdes.

“Bella.”

“Harry, where are you?”

“Out and about. How’d it go at Foothill?”

“A nonstarter. The cases didn’t match.”

Bosch nodded.

“Oh, well. I just ran into your boy Mitch Maron. He’s still pissed at us.”

“At Starbucks?”

“No, I’m in front of Frida Lopez’s old house. He just came by todeliver the mail and tell me what a shit I am. Says he’s going to hire a lawyer.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. What are you doing there?”

“Nothing. Just thinking. I guess hoping something would shake loose. I think our guy-something tells me it won’t be long before there’s another.”

“I know what you mean. That’s why I was so hyped about this Foothill thing. Damn it! Why are there no other cases out there?”

“That’s the question.”

Bosch heard the call-waiting click on his phone. He checked the screen and saw that it was the number Whitney Vance had given him.

“Hey, I got a call,” he said. “Let’s talk tomorrow about next moves.”

“You got it, Harry,” Lourdes said.

Bosch switched over to the other call.

“Mr. Vance?”

There was no answer, only silence.

“Mr. Vance, are you there?”

Silence.

Bosch pushed the phone hard against his ear and put the window back up. He thought he might be able to hear breathing. He wondered if it was Vance and if he was unable to talk because of the health issue Sloan had mentioned.

“Mr. Vance, is that you?”

Bosch waited but heard nothing and then the call was disconnected.