The Wrong Side of Goodbye

19

Bosch entered the police station through the side door and headed down the back hall to the detective bureau. At the crossroads with the main hallway he looked right and saw a gathering of people outside the door to the roll-call room. Among them was Bella Lourdes, who caught Bosch in her peripheral vision and signaled him over. She was wearing jeans and a black golf shirt with the SFPD badge and unit designation on the left breast. Her gun and real badge were on her belt.

“What’s going on?” Bosch asked.

“We got lucky,” Lourdes said. “The Screen Cutter made an attempt today but the victim got away. The chief said that’s enough. He’s going public.”

Bosch just nodded. He still thought it was the wrong move but he understood the pressure on Valdez. Having sat on knowledge of the previous cases was going to look bad enough. Lourdes was right about that. They were lucky the chief wasn’t in the roll-call room telling the media about a fifth rape.

“Where’s the victim?” Bosch asked.

“In the War Room,” Lourdes said. “She’s still pretty shaky. I was giving her some time.”

“How come I wasn’t called?”

Lourdes looked surprised.

“The captain said he couldn’t reach you.”

Bosch just shook his head and let it go. It was a petty move on Trevino’s part, but there were more important things to worry about.

Bosch looked over the heads of Lourdes and the others in the hallway to try to get a glimpse of the press conference. He could see Valdez and Trevino at the front of the room. He could not tell how many members of the media had shown up, because the reporters would be sitting and the camera operators would be at the back. He knew it all depended on what else was going on in Los Angeles that day. A serial rapist on the loose in San Fernando, where the population largely ignored English-language media, was probably not a massive draw. He had seen that one of the media trucks outside was from Univision Noticias. That would get the word out locally.

“So did Trevino or Valdez talk about a control?” he asked.

“A control?” Lourdes asked.

“Holding something back that only we and the rapist would know. So we can kick out false confessions, confirm a true confession.”

“Uh…no, that didn’t come up.”

“Maybe Trevino should have actually tried to call me instead of trying to run a play on me.”

Bosch turned away from the group.

“You ready to go back and talk to her?” he asked. “How’s her English?”

“She understands English,” Lourdes said, “but likes to speak in Spanish.”

Bosch nodded. They started down the hall toward the detective bureau. The War Room was a large meeting room next to the bureau,with a long table and a whiteboard wall where raids, cases, and deployments could be D&Ded-diagrammed and discussed. It was usually used for operations like DUI task force sweeps and parade coverage.

“So what do we know?” Bosch asked.

“You probably know her or recognize her,” Lourdes said. “She’s a barista at the Starbucks. She works part-time on the morning shift. Six to eleven every day.”

“What’s her name?”

“Beatriz with a Z. Last name Sahagun.”

Bosch couldn’t connect the name with a face. There were three women who were usually working at Starbucks in the mornings when he came in. He assumed he would recognize her when he got to the War Room.

“She went right home after work?” Bosch said.

“Yes, and he’s waiting for her,” Lourdes said. “She lives on Seventh a block off of Maclay. Fits the profile: single family house, residential abutting commercial. She comes in and immediately knows something’s off.”

“She saw the screen?”

“No, she didn’t see anything. She smelled him.”

“Smelled him?”

“She just said she came in and the house didn’t smell right. And she remembered our fuckup with the mailman. She was working there at the Starbucks that day we took Maron down. Then the next time he came in for his coffee and breakfast sandwich, he told the girls behind the counter that the police had mistaken him for a rapist that was hitting in the neighborhoods. So she was immediately alarmed. She comes home, something isn’t right, and she grabs a broom in the kitchen.”

“Holy shit, brave girl. She should’ve gotten out of there.”

“Fucking A, I know. But she sneaks up on him. Comes into the bedroom and knows he’s behind the curtain. She can tell. So she takes a swing with the broom like Adrian Gonzalez and clocks the guy. Right in the face. He falls out, brings the curtain down with him. He’s dazed, doesn’t know what the fuck happened, and then just jumps through the window and books it. We’re talking right through the glass.”

“Who’s working that scene?”

“The A team, and the captain put Sisto on it to babysit. But Harry, guess what? We got the knife.”

“Wow.”

“He dropped it when she hit him and then it got tangled up in the curtain and he left it. Sisto just called me when they found it.”

“Does the chief know about it?”

“No.”

“That’s our control. We need to tell Sisto and the A team to keep it on the down-low.”

“Got it.”

“What mask was he wearing?”

“Didn’t get to that yet with her.”

“What about her menstrual cycle?”

“Didn’t ask about that either.”

They were now at the door to the War Room.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “You ready? You take lead.”

“Let’s do it.”

Bosch opened the door and held it as Lourdes went in first. He immediately recognized the woman sitting at the big table as someone who made his iced lattes at the Starbucks around the corner. She was always smiling and friendly and was usually making his drink before he had even ordered it.

Beatriz Sahagun was texting someone on her phone as they entered.She looked up solemnly and recognized Bosch. A small smile played on her face.

“Iced latte,” she said.

Bosch nodded and smiled back. He offered his hand and she shook it.

“Beatriz, I’m Harry Bosch. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Bosch and Lourdes took seats across the table from her and began asking her questions. With the general story already known, Lourdes was able to take a deeper dive, and new details emerged. On occasion Bosch would ask a question and Lourdes would repeat it in Spanish to make sure there was no misunderstanding. Beatriz answered the questions slowly and thoughtfully and that allowed Bosch to understand most of what was said without needing Lourdes to translate back to him.

Beatriz was twenty-four years old and fit the physical profile of the Screen Cutter’s prior victims. She had long brown hair, dark eyes, and a slight build. She had worked at Starbucks for two years and primarily as a barista because her English-language skills were not up to the level required for taking orders and payments. She reported to Bosch and Lourdes that she had had no troubling encounters with customers or fellow employees. She had no stalkers or issues with former boyfriends. She shared her house with another Starbucks barista who usually worked the day shift and was gone at the time of the intrusion.

In the course of the interview Beatriz revealed that the intruder in her house was wearing a Lucha Libre wrestling mask and she offered the same description of it as the previous Screen Cutter victim-black, green, and red.

She also revealed that she tracked her menstrual cycle on a calendar she kept on her bedside table. She explained that she was raised as a strict Catholic and had practiced the rhythm method of birth control with her former boyfriend.

The detectives paid particular attention to what had alerted Beatriz to the possibility that there was an intruder in her house. The smell. Under careful questioning she revealed that she believed it was not the smell of cigarettes but the smell exuded by someone who smokes. Bosch understood the distinction and thought it was a good get. The Screen Cutter was a smoker. He didn’t smoke while he was in her house but he had a scent trail that she picked up on.

Beatriz hugged her body during most of the interview. She had acted instinctively to find the intruder rather than to flee and now in the aftermath was realizing how risky a decision it had been. When they were finished with the interview the detectives suggested that they take her out the side door to avoid any reporters still in the vicinity. They also offered to take her home to gather clothes and belongings she would need for at least the next few days. It was recommended that she and her roommate not stay in the home for a while, both because crime scene techs and investigators would want access and for security reasons. The detectives did not specifically suggest that the Screen Cutter might come back but it wasn’t far from their minds.

Lourdes called Sisto to give him the heads-up that they were coming and then they drove in Lourdes’s city car over to the victim’s house.

Sisto was waiting in front of the house. He was born and raised local and the SFPD was the only department he had ever worked for. Lourdes had outside experience with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department before coming over to San Fernando. Sisto was dressed similarly to Lourdes in jeans and black golf shirt. It seemed to be the casual detective uniform employed most often by the pair. Since coming to work at SFPD Bosch had been impressed with Lourdes’s skill and dedication and less so with Sisto’s. He appeared to Bosch tobe marking time. He was always on his phone texting and was more likely to discuss the morning surf report when making small talk than to bring up cases or police matters. Some detectives put photos and other reminders of cases on their desks and bulletin boards, some put reminders of their interests outside the job. Sisto was one of the latter. His desk was festooned with surfing and Dodgers paraphernalia. Looking at it the first time, Bosch could not even tell it was a detective’s desk.

Lourdes stuck close to Beatriz as she went into the house and gathered clothes and toiletries into a suitcase and duffel bag. After she was packed Lourdes asked if she could tell her story once more and walk the investigators through it. Beatriz obliged and once again Bosch marveled at her choice to go through the house looking for the intruder rather than to run as fast as she could from the premises.

Lourdes volunteered to drive Beatriz to her mother’s home, also in San Fernando, and Bosch stayed behind with Sisto and the forensic team. He first inspected the rear window where the screen had been cut out and the initial entry made into the house. It was very similar to the other cases.

Bosch next asked Sisto to show him the knife that was recovered from the tangle of the fallen curtain. Sisto pulled a plastic evidence bag from a brown paper bag holding several collected items.

“Forensics already checked it,” Sisto said. “It’s clean. No prints. Guy wore gloves and a mask.”

Bosch nodded as he studied the knife through the plastic. It was a black folding knife and the blade was open. He could see the manufacturer’s logo stamped on the blade along with some code numbers too small and difficult to read through the plastic. He would make sure he looked at it back in the controlled environment of the detective bureau.

“Nice knife, though,” Sisto added. “I looked it up on my phone. It’s made by a company called TitaniumEdge. It’s called Socom Black. The powdered black blade is so it doesn’t reflect light-you know, when you’re out at night and have to shank somebody.”

He said it with sarcasm that didn’t amuse Bosch.

“Yeah, I know,” Bosch said.

“I looked at a couple knife blogs while I was waiting here-yes, they have knife blogs. A lot of them say the Socom Black is one of the best out there.”

“Best for what?” Bosch asked.

“Scary shit, I guess. Wet work. Socom probably stands for some kind of special forces black ops stuff.”

“Special Operations Command. Delta Force.”

Sisto looked surprised.

“Whoa. I guess you know your military shit.”

“I know a few things.”

Bosch carefully handed him back the knife.

Bosch wasn’t sure what Sisto thought of him. They’d had little interaction even though their desks in the bureau were only a privacy wall apart. Sisto handled property crimes and Bosch wasn’t spending his time on unsolved property crimes, so there had been little reason for conversation beyond the routine salutations each day. Bosch assumed that Sisto, who was half Harry’s age, viewed the older detective as some kind of relic from the past. The fact that Bosch most often wore a jacket and tie when he came in to work for free was probably confounding to him as well.

“So the blade was not folded when you found it?” Bosch asked. “The guy was behind the curtain with the blade out?”

“Yes, out and ready,” Sisto said. “Think we ought to fold it closed so nobody gets cut?”

“No. Book it the way you found it. And just be careful with it.Warn people it’s open. Maybe see about getting a box when you take it back to Evidence Control.”

Sisto nodded as he carefully placed the knife back in the larger evidence bag. Bosch stepped over to the window and looked down at the broken glass in the backyard. The Screen Cutter had hurled himself into the window and broken through the framing as well as the glass. Bosch’s first thought was that he had to have been hurt. The whack with the broomstick must have been so stunning that he chose to flee instead of fight-the opposite reaction of his intended victim. But going through the window and taking out the frame as well as the glass took a lot of force.

“Any blood or anything in the glass?” he asked.

“Not that we found so far,” Sisto said.

“You got the word on the knife, right? We don’t talk about it with anybody-especially the brand and model.”

“Roger that. You think people are really going to come in and confess to this?”

“I’ve seen stranger things. You never know.”

Bosch pulled his phone and started moving away from Sisto so he could make a call in private. He stepped into the hallway and then into the kitchen, where he called his daughter’s number. As usual, she didn’t answer. Her primary use of the cell phone was for texting and checking her social media. But Bosch also knew that while she might not answer his calls or even know about them-her phone’s ringer was perpetually silenced-she did listen to the messages he left.

As expected, the call rang through to message.

“Hey, it’s your dad. Just wanted to check on you. Hope everything is good and you’re safe. I might be traveling through the OC sometime this week on my way to San Diego on a case. Let me know if you want to grab coffee or something to eat. Maybe dinner.Okay, that’s it. Love you and hope to see you soon-oh, and put water in that dog bowl.”

After disconnecting he stepped out the front door of the house, where there was a patrol officer on post. His name was Hernandez.

“Who’s boss tonight?” Bosch asked.

“Sergeant Rosenberg,” Hernandez said.

“Can you hit him up and see if he’ll swing by and grab me? I need to get back to the station.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bosch walked out to the curb to wait for the patrol car with Irwin Rosenberg to come along. He needed a ride but he also needed to tell Rosenberg, who was watch commander for the night, to have patrol keep an eye on Beatriz Sahagun’s house.

He checked his phone and saw that he had just gotten a text back from Maddie saying she was up for dinner if he was passing through and that there was a restaurant she had been wanting to try. Bosch replied that they would set it up as soon as his schedule became clear. He knew that his daughter, the San Diego trip, and the Vance case were all going to be put on hold for at least a couple days. He would have to stay with the Screen Cutter case, if only to be ready to respond to what the media spotlight would invariably bring in.