The Wrong Side of Goodbye

24

While Haller studied the letter and will that Bosch had unpackaged and spread with gloved hands on the dining room table, Harry worked his computer, seeing if he could get access to 1970 birth records in San Diego County. Whitney Vance’s death was a game changer. He felt a more urgent need to nail down the heir question. He needed to get this to the DNA level. He needed to find Dominick Santanello’s daughter.

Unfortunately he found that the Bureau of Vital Records and Statistics had digital records going back only twenty-four years. As he had in his search for Santanello’s birth certificate, Bosch would need to look through physical records and microfilm by hand to find a San Diego County birth in 1970. He was writing down the address for the Bureau on Rosecrans Street when Haller completed his first assessment of the two documents.

“This is off the charts,” he said.

Bosch looked at him.

“What is?” he asked.

“Every damn thing about this,” Haller said. “What you have here is a holographic will, okay? That means it was handwritten. And I checked on the way over. Holographic wills are accepted as legal instruments upon verification in California.”

“Vance probably knew that.”

“Oh, he knew a lot. That’s why he sent you the pen. Not for the bullshit reason in the will. He sent it because he knew verification is the key. You say that when you met with him last week at the mansion, he was of sound mind and body-like he says here?”

“That’s right.”

“And exhibiting no sign of illness or health threat?”

“Other than being old and fragile, none.”

“I wonder then what the coroner will find.”

“I wonder if the coroner will even look. An eighty-five-year-old man comes through, they’re not going to look too long and hard at him. Eighty-five-year-olds die. It’s no mystery.”

“You mean there won’t be an autopsy?”

“There should be but that doesn’t mean there will be. If the Pasadena Police signed off on it at the scene as a natural, there might not be a full autopsy unless there’s visible evidence to the contrary upon medical examiner’s inspection.”

“I guess we’ll see. You have a connection inside Pasadena PD?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

Upon his arrival, Haller’s driver had carried in the photocopier/printer from the Lincoln, then returned to wait behind the wheel. Haller now pulled gloves from the cardboard dispenser Bosch had placed on the table. He stretched a pair on and started making copies of the documents.

“Why don’t you have a copier here?” he asked while he worked.

“I did,” Bosch said. “Had a printer-copier combo but Maddie took it to school with her. Haven’t gotten around to getting another.”

“How’s she doing down there?”

“Good. How about Hayley?”

“She’s good too. Totally into it.”

“That’s good.”

An awkward silence followed. Both their daughters-the same age and each the other’s only cousin-had gone to Chapman University, but because of different majors and interests, they had not formed the tight bond their fathers had hoped for and expected. They had shared a dorm room in the first year but gone separate ways the second. Hayley had stayed in the dorms and Maddie had rented the house with girls from the Psychology Department.

After making at least a dozen copies of the will, Haller moved on to the letter Vance wrote to Bosch and started making an equal number of copies.

“Why so many?” Bosch asked.

“’Cause you never know,” Haller said.

That was a non-answer, Bosch thought.

“So what do we do from here?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Haller said.

“What?”

“Nothing. For now. Nothing public, nothing in the courts. We just lie low and wait.”

“Why?”

“You keep working the case. Confirm that Vance has an heir. Once we have that, we see who makes a move, see what the corporation does. When they make their move we make ours. But we make our move from a position of knowing what they’re up to.”

“We don’t even know who ‘they’ are.”

“Sure we do. It’s all of them. It’s the corporation, the board of directors, the security people, it’s all of them.”

“Well, ‘they’ may be watching us right now.”

“We have to assume they are. But they don’t know what we have here. Otherwise this package wouldn’t have sat in your mailbox for four days.”

Bosch nodded. It was a good point. Haller gestured to the documents on the table, meaning the two originals.

“We have to safeguard these,” he said. “At all costs.”

“I have a safe deposit box,” Bosch said. “Studio City.”

“You can bet they already know that. They probably know everything about you. So we make copies and you put copies in your bank box. If they’re watching you they’ll think that’s where the will is.”

“And where will it really be?”

“You’ll figure something out. But don’t tell me.”

“Why not?”

“In case I get hit with an order from a judge to produce the will. If I don’t have it and don’t know where it is, I can’t produce it.”

“Smart.”

“We need to get to Ida Forsythe too. If you’re right about her being the one who smuggled this stuff to the post office, then we need to lock her story down in a statement. It will be part of the chain of authenticity. We’ll need verification of every step we take. When I finally go into court with this, I don’t want my ass hanging out in the wind.”

“I can get her address. If she has a driver’s license.”

Still wearing gloves, Haller picked up the gold pen.

“And this,” he said. “You’re sure it’s the one he had last week?”

“Pretty sure. I saw it in photos, too, on a wall in the mansion. A photo of him signing a book to Larry King.”

“Cool. Maybe we’ll bring Larry into court to verify-that’ll get a headline or two. We’ll also need Ida to confirm it as well. Remember, verification on all levels. His pen, his signature in the pen’s ink. We’ll match it. I have a lab that will do that-when the time is right.”

Finished with the copying, Haller started collating the documents, creating a dozen sets of both.

“You have paper clips?” he asked.

“No,” Bosch said.

“I have some in the car. You take half of these and I’ll take half. Put a set under the mattress, in the safe deposit box. Doesn’t hurt to have them in many places. I’ll do the same.”

“Where do you go from here?”

“I go to court and act like I don’t know shit about any of this while you find and confirm that heir.”

“When I get to her, do I tell her or confirm on the sly?”

“That’s gotta be your call when you reach that point. But whatever you decide, remember that secrecy is our edge-for now.”

“Got it.”

Haller went to the front door and whistled to get his driver’s attention. He signaled him to come in to get the printer/copier. He then stepped out onto the front stoop and looked both ways up the street before coming back in.

The driver entered, unplugged the machine, and wrapped the cord around it so he could carry it back out without tripping on it. Haller walked over to the sliding glass doors in the living room to look out at the view of the Cahuenga Pass.

“Your view is quieter,” he said. “Lots of trees.”

Haller lived on the other side of the hill with an unfettered view across the Sunset Strip and the vast expanse of the city. Bosch stepped over and slid the door open a few feet so Haller could hear the never-ending hiss of the freeway at the bottom of the pass.

“Not so quiet,” Bosch said.

“Sounds like the ocean,” Haller said.

“A lot of people up here tell themselves that. Sounds like a freeway to me.”

“You know, you’ve seen a lot with all the murders you worked for all those years. All the human depravity. The cruelty.”

Haller kept his eyes focused out into the pass. There was a red-tailed hawk floating on spread wings above the ridgeline on the other side of the freeway.

“But you haven’t seen anything like this,” he continued. “There are billions of dollars on the line here. And people will do anything-I mean anything-to maintain control of it. Be ready for that.”

“You too,” Bosch said.