Trunk Music

PART VII

DURING HIS TIME in Vietnam, Bosch’s primary assignment had been to fight the war in the tunnel networks that ranged beneath the villages in the Cu Chi province, to go into the darkness they called the black echo and to come back alive. But the tunnel work was done quickly, and between those missions he spent days in the bush, fighting and waiting under the jungle canopy. One time he and a handful of others got cut off from their unit and Bosch spent a night sitting in the elephant grass, his back pressed against the back of an Alabama boy named Donnel Fredrick, listening as a company of VC fighters moved through. They sat there and waited for Charlie to stumble onto them. There was nothing else they could do and there were too many to fight. So they waited and the minutes went by like hours. They all made it through, though Donnel was later killed in a foxhole by a direct mortar hit-friendly fire. Bosch always thought that night in the elephant grass was the closest he’d ever come to experiencing a miracle.

Bosch remembered that night sometimes when he was alone on a stakeout or in a tight spot. He thought about it now as he sat cross-legged against the base of a eucalyptus tree ten yards from the tarp the homeless man, George, had erected. Over his clothes, he wore a green plastic poncho he always kept in the trunk of his work car. The candy bars he had with him were Hershey’s chocolate with almonds, the same kind he had taken with him into the bush so long ago. And like that night in the tall grass, he had not moved for what seemed like hours. It was dark, with only a glimmer of moonlight making it down through the overhead canopy, and he was waiting. He wanted a cigarette but couldn’t afford to open a flame in the blackness. Every now and then he thought he could hear Edgar make a move or readjust himself twenty yards to his right, but he couldn’t be sure that it was his partner and not a deer or maybe a coyote passing through.

George had told him there were coyotes. When he had put the old man into the back of Kiz’s car for the ride to the hotel they were putting him up in, he had warned Bosch. But Bosch wasn’t afraid of coyotes.

The old man had not gone easily. He was sure they were there to take him back to Camarillo. And the truth was, he should have been going back there but the institution wouldn’t have him, not without a government-punched ticket. Instead he was going to be treated to a couple of nights at the Mark Twain Hotel in Hollywood. It wasn’t a bad place. Bosch had lived there for more than a year while his house was being rebuilt. The worst room there beat a tarp in the woods hands down. But Bosch knew George might not see it that way.

By eleven-thirty the traffic up on Mulholland had thinned down to a car every five minutes or so. Bosch couldn’t see them because of the incline and the thickness of the brush, but he could hear them and see the lights wash through the foliage above him as the cars made the curve. He was alert now because a car had slowly gone by twice in the last fifteen minutes, once each way. Bosch had sensed that it was the same car because the engine was over-throttled to compensate for a skip in the engine stroke.

And now it was back for a third time. Bosch listened intently as he heard the familiar engine, and this time there was the added sound of tires turning on gravel. The car was pulling off the road. In a few moments the engine stopped and the following silence was punctuated only by the sound of a car door being opened and then closed. Bosch slowly got up on his haunches, as painful as it was on his knees, and got ready. He looked into the darkness to his right, toward Edgar’s position, and saw nothing. He then looked up the incline, toward the edge, and waited.

In a few moments he could see the beam of a flashlight cut through the brush. The light was pointed downward and was moving in a back-and-forth sweeping pattern as its holder slowly descended the hill toward the tarp. Under his poncho Bosch held his gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, his thumb paused on the switch and ready to turn it on.

The movement of the light stopped. Bosch guessed that its holder had found the spot where the suit bag should have been. After a moment of seeming hesitation the beam was lifted and it swept through the woods, flicking across Bosch for a fraction of a second. But it didn’t come back to him. Instead, it held on the blue tarp as Bosch guessed it probably would. The light began advancing, its holder stumbling once as he or she went toward George’s home. A few moments later, Bosch saw the beam moving behind the blue plastic. He felt another charge of adrenaline begin to course through his body. Again, his mind flashed on Vietnam. This time it was the tunnels that he thought of. Coming upon an enemy in the darkness. The fear and thrill of it. It was only after he had left that place safely that he acknowledged to himself there had been a thrill to it. And in looking to replace that thrill, he had joined the cops.

Bosch slowly raised himself, hoping his knees wouldn’t crack, as he watched the light. They had placed the suit bag in underneath the shelter after stuffing it first with crumpled newspaper. Bosch began to move as quietly as he could in behind the tarp. He was coming from the left. According to the plan, Edgar would be coming from the right, but it was still too dark for Bosch to see him.

Bosch was ten feet away now and could hear the excited breathing of the person under the tarp. Then there was the sound of a zipper being pulled open followed by the sharp cut-off of breath.

“Shit!”

Bosch moved in after hearing the curse. He realized he recognized the man’s voice just as he came around the open side of the tarp and raised both his weapon and his flashlight from beneath his poncho.

“Freeze! Police!” Bosch yelled at the same moment he put on his light. “All right, come out of there, Powers.”

Almost immediately Edgar’s light came on from Bosch’s right.

“What the…?” Edgar started to say.

Crouched there in the crossing beams of light was Officer Ray Powers. In full uniform, the big patrol cop held a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. A look of utter surprise played across his face. His mouth dropped open.

“Bosch,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“That’s our line, Powers,” Edgar said angrily. “Don’t you know what the fuck you just did? You walked right into a-what are you doing here, man?”

Powers lowered his gun and slid it back into its holster.

“I was-there was a report. Somebody must’ve seen you guys sneaking in here. They said they saw two men sneaking around.”

Bosch stepped back from the tarp, keeping his gun raised.

“Come out of there, Powers,” he said.

Powers did as he was commanded. Bosch put the beam from his light right in the man’s face.

“What about this report? Who called it in?”

“Just some guy driving by up on the road. Must’ve seen you going in here. Can you get the light out of my face?”

Bosch didn’t move the focus of the light an inch.

“Then what?” he asked. “Who’d he call?”

Bosch knew that after Rider had dropped them off, her job was to park on a nearby street and keep her scanner on. If there had been such a radio call, she would have heard it and called off the patrol response, telling the dispatcher it was a surveillance operation.

“He didn’t call it in. I was cruising by and he waved me down.”

“You mean he claimed he just saw two guys going into the woods?”

“Uh, no. No, he waved me down earlier. I just didn’t get a chance to check it out until now.”

Bosch and Edgar had gone into the woods at two-thirty. It was full daylight then and Powers hadn’t even been on duty yet. And the only car that had been in the area at the time was Rider’s. Bosch knew Powers was lying, and it was all beginning to fall into place. His finding the body, his fingerprint on the trunk, the pepper spray on the victim, the reason the bindings were taken off the wrists. It was already there, in the details.

“How much earlier?” Bosch asked.

“Uh, it was right after I came on duty. I can’t remember the time.”

“Daylight?”

“Yeah, daylight. Can you put the fuckin’ light down?”

Bosch ignored him again.

“What was the citizen’s name?”

“I didn’t get it. Just some guy in a Jag, he waved me down at Laurel Canyon and Mulholland. Told me what he saw and I said I’d check it when I got the chance. So I was checking it out and saw the bag here. I figured it belonged to the guy in the trunk. I saw the bulletin you people put out about the car and the luggage, so I knew you were looking for it. Sorry I blew it, but you people should’ve let the watch commander know what you were doing. Jesus, Bosch, I’m going blind here.”

“Yeah, it’s blown all right,” Bosch said, finally lowering the light. He lowered his gun to his side also but didn’t put it away. He kept it ready there, under the poncho. “Might as well pack it in now. Powers, go on up the hill to your car. Jerry, grab the bag.”

Bosch climbed up the hill behind Powers, careful to keep the light up and back on the patrol cop. He knew that if they had cuffed Powers down by the tarp, they’d never get him up the hill because of the steep terrain and because Powers might fight them. So he had to scam him. He let him think he was clear.

At the top of the hill, Bosch waited until Edgar came up behind them before making a move.

“Know what I don’t get, Powers?” he said.

“What, Bosch?”

“I don’t get why you waited until dark to check out a complaint you got during the day. You’re told that two suspicious-looking characters went into the woods and you decide to wait until it’s late and it’s dark to check it out by yourself.”

“I told you. Didn’t have the time.”

“You’re full of shit, Powers,” Edgar said.

He had either just caught on or had played along with Bosch perfectly.

Bosch saw Powers’s eyes go dead as he went inside to try to figure out what to do. In that instant Bosch raised his gun again and aimed it at a spot between those two vacant portals.

“Don’t think so much, Powers,” he said. “It’s over. Now stand still. Jerry?”

Edgar moved in behind the big cop and yanked his gun out of its holster. He dropped it on the ground and jerked one of Powers’s hands behind his back. He cuffed the hand and then he did the other. When he was done, he picked up the gun. It seemed to Bosch that Powers was still inside, still staring blankly at nothing. Then he came back.

“You people, you have just fucked up big time,” he said, controlled rage in his voice.

“We’ll see about that. Jerry, you got him? I want to call Kiz.”

“Go ahead. I got his ass. I hope he does make a move. Go ahead, Powers, do something stupid for me.”

“Fuck you, Edgar! You don’t know what you’ve just done. You’re goin’ down, bro. You’re going down!”

Edgar remained silent. Bosch took the Motorola two-way out of his pocket, turned it on and keyed the mike.

“Kiz, you there?”

“Here. I’m here.”

“Come on over. Hurry.”

“On my way.”

Bosch put the two-way back and they stood there in silence for a minute until they saw the flashing blue light lead Rider’s car around the bend. When it pulled up, the lights swept repeatedly through the tops of the trees on the incline. Bosch realized that from below, down in George’s shelter, the lights on the trees might look as if they were coming from the sky. It all came to Bosch then. George’s spacecraft had been Powers’s patrol car. The abduction had been a traffic stop. The perfect way to get a man carrying nearly a half million in cash to stop. Powers had simply waited for Aliso’s white Rolls, probably at Mulholland and Laurel Canyon, then followed and put the lights on when they approached the secluded curve. Tony probably thought he had been speeding. He pulled over.

Rider pulled off the road behind the patrol car. Bosch came over and opened the back door and looked in at her.

“Harry, what is it?” she asked.

“Powers. Powers is it.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah. I want you and Jerry to take him in. I’ll follow with his car.”

He walked back over to Edgar and Powers.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“You people have all lost your jobs,” Powers said. “You fucked yourselves up.”

“You can tell us about it at the station.”

Bosch jerked him by the arm, feeling its thickness and strength. He and Edgar then hustled him into the back of Rider’s car. Edgar went around and got in the other side next to him.

Looking in through the open rear door, Bosch went over what would be the procedure.

“Take all his shit away and lock him in one of the interview rooms,” he said. “Make sure you get his cuff key. I’ll be right behind you.”

Bosch slammed the door and knocked twice on the roof. He then went to the patrol car, put the suit bag in the back seat and got in. Rider pulled out and Bosch followed. They sped west toward Laurel Canyon.

It took Billets less than an hour to come in. When she got there, the three of them were sitting at the homicide table. Bosch was going through the murder book with Rider while she took notes on a legal pad. Edgar was at the typewriter. Billets walked in with a force and look on her face that clearly showed the situation. Bosch hadn’t talked to her yet. It had been Rider who had called her in from home.

“What are you doing to me?” Billets asked, her piercing eyes clearly fixed on Bosch.

What she was really saying to him was that he was the team leader and the responsibility for this potential fuckup rested squarely on him. That was okay with Bosch, because not only was that right and fair, but in the half hour he’d had to go through the murder book and the other evidence, his confidence had grown.

“What am I doing to you? I’m bringing in your killer.”

“I told you to conduct a quiet and careful investigation,” Billets responded. “I didn’t tell you to conduct some kind of half-assed sting operation and then drag a cop in here! I can’t believe this.”

Billets was now pacing behind Rider’s back without looking at them. The squad room was deserted except for the three of them and the angry lieutenant.

“It’s Powers, Lieutenant,” Bosch said. “If you’d calm down, we-”

“Oh, it’s him, is it? You have the evidence of that? Great! I’ll call a DA in here right now and we’ll write up the charges then. Because you really had me worried there for a minute that you three jerked this guy off the street with just enough probable cause to charge him with jaywalking.”

Now she was looking at Bosch with the angry eyes again. She had even stopped her pacing to level them at him. He responded as calmly as he could.

“First of all, it was my decision to take him off the street. And you’re right, we don’t have enough to call out a DA yet. But we’ll get it. There’s no doubt in my mind he’s the man. It’s him and the widow.”

“Well, I’m glad there’s no doubt in your mind but you’re not the DA or the goddamned jury.”

He didn’t respond. It was no use. He had to wait for her anger to ebb and then they could talk sensibly.

“Where is he?” Billets asked.

“Room three,” Bosch said.

“What did you tell the watch commander?”

“Nothing. It happened at the end of shift. Powers was going to grab the suit bag and then go punch out. We were able to bring him in while most everybody else was still up in roll call. I parked his car and dropped the key at the watch office. I told the watch lieutenant we were using Powers for a little while on a warrant, that we wanted a uniform with us when we knocked on a door. He said fine and then I expect he went off shift. As far as I know, nobody knows we have him back there.”

Billets thought for a moment. When she spoke, she was calmer and more like the person who normally sat behind the desk in the glass office.

“Okay, I’m going to go back there and get some coffee, see if I get asked about him. When I come back, we’ll go over all of this in detail and see what we have.”

She walked slowly to the hallway at the rear of the squad room that led to the watch office. Bosch watched her go and then picked up the phone and dialed the number of the security office of the Mirage hotel and casino. He told the officer who answered who he was and that he needed to speak with Hank Meyer immediately. When the officer mentioned that it was after midnight, Bosch told him it was an emergency and that he was sure that if Meyer was informed who needed to speak with him, he would return the call. Bosch gave him all the numbers he could be reached at, beginning with his number at the homicide table, and hung up. He went back to his work with the murder book.

“Did you say he’s in three?”

Bosch looked up. Billets was back, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. He nodded.

“I want to have a look,” she said.

Bosch got up and walked with her down the hallway to the four doors leading to the interview rooms. Doors marked one and two were on the left, three and four on the right. But there was no fourth interview room. The room marked four was actually a small cubicle with a one-way glass window that allowed for observation of room three. In three, the other side of the glass was a mirror. Billets entered four and looked through the glass at Powers. He sat ramrod straight at a table in a chair directly opposite the mirror. His hands were cuffed behind his back. He still wore his uniform but his equipment belt had been removed. He stared straight ahead at his own reflection in the mirror. This created an eerie effect in the fourth room because it appeared that he was looking right at them, as if there were no mirror or glass between them.

Billets said nothing. She just looked back at the man staring at her.

“There is a lot hanging in the balance tonight, Harry,” she said quietly.

“I know,” he said.

They stood there silently for a few moments until Edgar opened the door and told Bosch that Hank Meyer was on the phone. Bosch headed back, picked up the phone and told Meyer what he needed. Meyer said he was at home and that he’d have to go into the hotel, but he would call back as soon as possible. Bosch thanked him and hung up. Billets had now taken one of the empty seats at the homicide table.

“Okay,” she said, “one of you tell me exactly how this went down tonight.”

Bosch remained in the lead and took the next fifteen minutes to recount how he found Tony Aliso’s suit bag, set up the sting through Veronica Aliso and then waited in the woods off Mulholland until Powers showed up. He explained how the story Powers had offered for his being there did not make sense.

“What else did he say?” Billets asked at the end.

“Nothing. Jerry and Kiz put him in the room and that’s where he’s been ever since.”

“What else have you got?”

“For starters, we have his print on the inside of the trunk lid. We also have a record of association with the widow.”

Billets raised her eyebrows.

“That’s what we were working on when you came in. On Sunday night when Jerry ran the victim’s name through the computer, we got a hit on a burglary report from back in March. Somebody hit the Aliso house. Jerry pulled the report but it looked unconnected. Just a routine burglary. And it was, except the officer who took the initial report from Mrs. Aliso was Powers. We think the relationship started with the burglary. That’s when they met. After that, we have the gate records. Police patrols of Hidden Highlands are recorded on the gate logs by the car’s roof number. The logs show the car assigned to Powers-the Zebra car-has been going in there two, three nights a week on patrol, always on the nights we know from credit card records that Tony was out of town. I think he was poppin’ over there to see Veronica.”

“What else?” the lieutenant asked. “So far all you’ve got is a bunch of coincidences strung together.”

“There are no coincidences,” Bosch said. “Not like this.”

“Then what else have you got?”

“Like I said, his story about why he came down into the woods doesn’t check out. He came down looking for the suit bag and the only way he would have known that it was worth coming back for was through Veronica. It’s him, Lieutenant. It’s him.”

Billets thought about this. Bosch believed the facts he was giving her were beginning to have a cumulative effect in convincing her. He had one thing left with which to nail her down.

“There’s one other thing. Remember our problem with Veronica? If she was involved in this, how did she get out of Hidden Highlands and not have it noted on the gate log?”

“Right.”

“Well, the gate log shows that on the night of the murder, the Zebra car cruised through on patrol. Twice. He was in and out both times. First time he was logged in at ten and out at ten-ten. Then back in at eleven-forty-eight and out four minutes later. It was noted as just routine patrol.”

“Okay, so?”

“So on the first time, he cruises in and picks her up. She gets down on the floor in the back. It’s dark out, the gate guy only sees Powers heading back out. They go and wait for Tony, do the deed and then Powers takes her back home-the second set of entries on the log.”

“It works,” Billets said, nodding her approval. “The actual abduction, how do you see it?”

“We’ve figured all along it took two people to do this job. First off, Veronica had to know from Tony what flight he was taking. So that set the time frame. Powers picks her up that night and they go to Laurel Canyon and Mulholland and wait for the white Rolls to go by. We figure that happens about eleven or so. Powers follows until Tony is close to the curve through the woods. He puts on the lights and pulls him over, like a routine traffic stop. Only he tells Tony to step out and go to the back of the car. Maybe he makes him open the trunk, maybe he does that himself after he cuffs him. Either way, the trunk is opened and Powers has a problem. Tony’s suit bag and a box of videos are in the trunk and that doesn’t leave much room for him. Powers doesn’t have much time. A car could come around the bend any moment and light up the whole thing. So he takes the suit bag and the box out and throws them down the hill into the woods. He then tells Tony to get in the trunk. Tony says no or maybe he struggles a bit. Either way, Powers takes out his pepper spray and gives him a shot in the face. Tony is then real manageable, easy to throw into the trunk. Maybe Powers pulled his shoes off then to stop him from kicking around in there, making noise.”

“That’s when Veronica pops out,” Rider said, picking up the story. “She drives the Rolls while Powers follows in the squad car. They knew where they were going. They needed a spot where the car wouldn’t be found for a couple days, giving Powers time to get over to Vegas on Saturday, plant the gun and lay down a few more clues like the anonymous call to Metro. That call was what was supposed to put the finger on Luke Goshen. Not the fingerprints. That was just luck for them. Anyway, that’s getting ahead of the story. Veronica drives the Rolls and Powers follows. To the clearing over the Bowl. She pops the trunk and Powers leans in and does the job. Or maybe he puts one cap in Tony and he makes Veronica do the second. That way they’re partners for good, partners in blood.”

Billets nodded, a serious look on her face.

“It seems kind of risky. What if he had to take a radio call? The whole plan would go down the drain.”

“We thought of that and Jerry checked with the watch office. Gomez was the CO Friday night. He says he remembers that Powers had such a busy shift he didn’t take a dinner break until ten. He doesn’t recall hearing from him until just before end of watch.”

Billets nodded again.

“What about the shoe prints recovered? Are they his?”

“Powers got lucky there,” Edgar said. “He’s wearing brand-new boots in there. Looks like he maybe just bought ’em today.”

“Shit!”

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “We figure he saw the shoe prints on the table last night at the Cat and Fiddle. He went out and got new ones today.”

“Oh, man…”

“Well, maybe there’s still a chance he didn’t get rid of the old ones. We’re working on a search warrant for his place. Oh, and our luck ain’t so bad, either. Jerry, tell her about the spray.”

Edgar leaned forward on the table.

“I went back to the supply post, took a look at the sheet. On Sunday Powers signed out an OC cartridge. Only I then went and looked at the fifty-one list in the watch loo’s office. No use-of-force reported by Powers in this deployment period.”

“So,” Billets said, “he somehow used his pepper spray, because he had to get a refill cartridge but he never reported using the spray to his watch commander.”

“Right.”

Billets thought about things for a few moments before speaking again.

“Okay,” she said, “what you’ve come up with quickly is all good stuff. But it’s not enough. It’s a circumstantial case and most of this can be explained away. Even if you could prove he and the widow have been meeting, it doesn’t prove murder. The fingerprint on the trunk can be explained by sloppy work at the crime scene. Who knows, maybe that’s all it really was.”

“I doubt it,” Bosch said.

“Well, your doubts aren’t good enough. Where do we go from here?”

“We still have some things in the fire. Jerry’s going for a warrant based on what we’ve got so far. If we get inside Powers’s house, maybe we find the shoes, maybe we find something else. We’ll see. I also have an angle in Vegas working. We figure that for them to have pulled this off, Powers had to have followed Tony over there once or twice, you know, to know about Goshen and pick him to hang it all on. If we’re lucky, Powers would’ve wanted to stay right on Tony. That would mean staying at the Mirage. You can’t stay there without a trail. You can pay cash but you’ve got to give a legit credit card imprint to cover room charges, phone calls, things like that. In other words, you can’t register under any name you don’t have on a credit card. I’ve got a guy checking.”

“Okay, it’s a start,” Billets said.

She nodded her head, cupped a hand over her mouth and lapsed into a contemplative silence for a long moment.

“What it all comes down to is that we need to break him, don’t we?” she finally asked.

Bosch nodded.

“Probably. Unless we get lucky with the warrant.”

“You’re not going to break him. He’s a cop, he knows the angles, he knows the rules of evidence.”

“We’ll see.”

She looked at her watch. Bosch looked at his and saw it was now one o’clock.

“We’re in trouble,” Billets said solemnly. “We won’t be able to contain this much past dawn. After that I will have to make proper notification of what we’ve done and what we’ve got going. If that happens, you can count on us not being involved, and worse.”

Bosch leaned forward.

“Go back home, Lieutenant,” he said. “You were never here. Let us have the night. Come back in at nine tomorrow. Bring a DA back with you if you want. Make sure it’s somebody who will go to the edge with you. If you don’t know one, I can call somebody. But give us till nine. Eight hours. Then you come in and we either have the complete package tied up for you or you go ahead and do what you have to do.”

She looked carefully at each one of them, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Good luck,” she said.

She nodded, got up and left them there.

Outside the door to interview room three, Bosch paused and composed his thoughts. He knew that everything would turn on what happened inside the room. He had to break Powers and that would be no easy task. Powers was a cop. He knew all the tricks. But somehow Bosch had to find a weakness he could exploit until the big man went down. He knew it was going to be a brutal match. He blew out his breath and opened the door.

Bosch stepped into the interview room, took the chair directly across from Powers and spread out the two sheets of paper he carried with him in front of Powers.

“Okay, Powers, I’m here to tell you what’s what.”

“You can save it, asshole. The only one I want to talk to is my lawyer.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for. Why don’t you take it easy and we’ll talk about it?”

“Take it easy? You people arrest me, hook me up like a goddamn criminal and then leave me in here for a fucking hour and a half while you sit out there and figure out how fucked up this is, and you want me to take it easy? What planet are you on, Bosch? I’m not taking anything easy. Now cut me loose or give me the goddamn phone!”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Deciding whether to book you or cut you loose. That’s why I came in, Powers. I thought maybe you could help us out on that.”

Powers didn’t appear to pick up on that. His eyes dropped to the center of the table and they were working-small, quick movements, looking for the angles.

“This is what is what,” Bosch said. “If I book you now, then we call the lawyer and we both know that is going to be that. No lawyer is gonna let his client talk to the cops. We’ll just have to go to court and you know what that means. You’ll be suspended, no pay. We’ll go for no bail and you’ll sit in the can nine, ten months and then maybe it gets straightened out in your favor. And maybe not. Meantime, you’re all over the front page. Your mother, father, neighbors…well, you know how that goes.”

Bosch took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He didn’t light it and he didn’t offer one to Powers. He remembered offering one to the big cop at the crime scene and being turned down.

“The alternative to that,” he continued, “is that we sit here and try to get this straightened out right now. You’ve got two forms there in front of you. The good thing about dealing with a cop like this is I don’t really need to explain this stuff to you. The first one’s a rights form. You know what that is. You sign that you understand your rights and then you make your choice. Talk to me or call your lawyer after we book you. The second form is the attorney waiver.”

Powers stared silently down at the pages and Bosch put a pen down on the table.

“I’ll take the cuffs off when you’re ready to sign,” Bosch said. “See, now the bad thing about dealing with a cop is that I can’t bluff you. You know the game. You know if you sign that waiver and talk to me, you’ll either talk yourself out of this or right into it…I can give you more time to think about it, if you want.”

“I don’t need any more time,” he said. “Take off the cuffs.”

Bosch got up and went around behind Powers.

“You right or left?”

“Right.”

There was barely enough room between the back of the big man and the wall to work on the cuffs. It was a dangerous position to be in with most suspects. But Powers was a cop and he probably knew that the moment he became violent was the moment he lost any chance of getting out of this room and back to his life. He also had to assume someone was watching and ready behind the glass in room four. Bosch unhooked the right cuff and closed it around one of the metal slats of the chair.

Powers scribbled signatures across both forms. Bosch tried to give no indication of his excitement. Powers was making a mistake. Bosch took the pen from him and put it in his pocket.

“Put your arm behind you.”

“Come on, Bosch. Treat me like a human. If we’re going to talk, let’s talk.”

“Put your arm behind you.”

Powers did as he was told and blew out his breath in frustration. Bosch recuffed his wrists through the metal slat at the back of the chair and then took his seat again. He cleared his throat, going over the last details in his mind. He knew his mission here. He had to make Powers believe he had the edge, that he had a chance to get out. If he believed that, then he might start talking. If he started talking, Bosch thought he could win the fight.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “I’m going to lay it out for you. If you can convince me that we have it wrong, then you’ll be out of here before the sun’s up.”

“That’s all I want.”

“Powers, we know you have a relationship with Veronica Aliso predating her husband’s death. We know you followed him to Vegas on at least two occasions prior to the killing.”

Powers kept his eyes on the table in front of him. But Bosch was able to read them like the needles of a polygraph machine. There had been a slight tremor in the pupils when Bosch mentioned Las Vegas.

“That’s right,” Bosch said. “We’ve got the records from the Mirage. That was careless, Powers, leaving a record like that. We can put you in Vegas with Tony Aliso.”

“So I like goin’ to Vegas, big deal. Tony Aliso was there? Wow, what a coincidence. From what I heard, he went there a lot. What else you got?”

“We’ve got your print, Powers. Fingerprint. Inside the car. You got a refill of pepper spray on Sunday, but you never filed a use-of-force report explaining how you used it.”

“Accidental discharge. I didn’t file a use-of-force because there wasn’t any. You haven’t got shit. My fingerprint? You’re right, you’ve probably got prints. But I was in that car, asshole. I’m the one who found the body, remember? This is a joke, man. I’m thinking I better just get my lawyer in here and take my chances. No DA is going to touch this bullshit with a ten-foot pole.”

Bosch ignored the baiting and went on.

“And last but not least, we have your little climb down the hill tonight. Your story is for shit, Powers. You went down there to look for Aliso’s suit bag because you knew it was there and you thought it had something you and the widow overlooked before. About a half million dollars. The only question I really have is whether she called you up and told you or if that was you in her house this morning when we dropped by.”

Bosch saw the pupils jump again slightly but then they went flat.

“Like I said, I’ll take that lawyer now.”

“I guess you’re just the errand boy, right? She told you to go and get the money while she waited at the mansion.”

Powers started laughing in a fake way.

“I like that, Bosch. Errand boy. Too bad I barely know the woman. But it’s a good try. Good try. I like you, too, Bosch, but I gotta tell you something.”

He leaned across the table and lowered his voice.

“I ever run across you again on the outside, you know, when it’s just me and you, head to head, I’m going to seriously fuck you up.”

He straightened up again and nodded. Bosch smiled.

“You know, I don’t think I was sure until now. But now I’m sure. You did it, Powers. You’re the man. And there is never going to be an outside for you. Never. So tell me, whose idea was it? Was she the first one to bring it up or was that you?”

Powers stared sullenly down at the table and shook his head.

“Let me see if I can figure it out,” Bosch said. “I guess you went up there to that big house and saw all that they had, the money, maybe heard about Tony and his Rolls, and it just went on from there. I’m betting it was your idea, Powers. But I think she knew you would come up with it. See, she’s a smart woman. She knew you would come up with it. And she waited…

“And you know what? We’ve got nothing on her. Nothing. She played you perfect, man. Right down the line. She’s going to do the walk and you”-he pointed at Powers’s chest-“are going to do the time. Is that how you want it?”

Powers leaned back, a bemused smile on his face.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Powers said. “You’re the errand boy here, but look at yourself. You’ve got nothin’ to deliver. Look at what you’ve got. You can’t tie me to Aliso. I found the body, man. I opened the car. If you found a print, then that’s when I left it. All the rest is a bunch of bullshit adding up to nothing. You go in to see a prosecutor with that, they’re going to laugh your ass out onto Temple Street. So go get me the phone, errand boy, and let’s get it on. Just go get me the phone.”

“Not yet, Powers,” Bosch said. “Not just yet.”

Bosch sat at his spot at the homicide table with his head down on his folded arms. An empty coffee cop was near his elbow. A cigarette he had perched on the edge of the table had burned down to the butt, leaving one more scar on the old wood.

Bosch was alone. It was almost six and there was just the hint of dawn’s light coming through the windows that ran high along the east wall of the room. He’d gone at it for more than four hours with Powers and had gained no ground. He hadn’t even made a dent in Powers’s cool demeanor. The first rounds had assuredly gone to the big patrol cop.

Bosch wasn’t asleep, though. He was simply resting and waiting and his thoughts remained focused on Powers. Bosch had no doubts. He was sure that he had the right man sitting handcuffed in the interview room. What minimal evidence they had certainly pointed to Powers. But it was more than the evidence that convinced him. It was experience and gut instinct. Bosch believed an innocent man would have been scared, not smug as Powers had been. An innocent man would not have taunted Bosch. And so what still remained now was to take away that smugness and break him. Bosch was tired but still felt up to the task. The only thing that worried him was time. Time was against him.

Bosch raised his head and looked at his watch. Billets would be back in three hours. He picked up the empty cup, used his palm to push the dead cigarette and its ashes into it and dropped it into the trash can under the table. He stood up, lit another cigarette and took a walk down the aisle between the crime tables. He tried to clear his mind, to get ready for the next round.

He thought about paging Edgar to see if he and Rider had found anything yet, anything at all that could help, but decided against it. They knew that time was important. They would have either called or come back if they had something.

As he stood at the far end of the squad room and these thoughts traveled through his mind, his eyes fell on the sex crimes table, and he realized after a moment that he was looking at a Polaroid photo of the girl who had come into the station with her mother on Friday to report that she had been raped. The photo was on the top of a stack of Polaroids that were paper-clipped to the outside of the case envelope. Detective Mary Cantu had left it on the top of her pile for Monday. Without thinking about it, Bosch pulled the stack of photos from beneath the clip and began to look through them. The girl had been badly mistreated and the bruises documented on her body by Cantu’s camera were a depressing testament to all that was wrong with the city. Bosch always found it easier to deal with victims who were no longer living. The live ones haunted him because they could never be consoled. Not fully. They were forever left with the question why.

Sometimes Bosch thought of his city as some kind of vast drain that pulled all bad things toward a spot where they swirled around in a deep concentration. It was a place where it seemed the good people were often outnumbered by the bad. The creeps and schemers, the rapists and killers. It was a place that could easily produce someone like Powers. Too easily.

Bosch put the photos back under the clip, embarrassed by his thoughtless voyeurism of the girl’s pain. He went back to the homicide table, picked up the phone and dialed his home number. It was nearly twenty-four hours since he had been to his house, and his hope was that Eleanor Wish would answer-he had left the key under the mat-or there might be a message from her. After three rings the line was picked up and he heard his own voice on tape tell himself to leave a message. He punched in his code to check for messages and the machine told him he had none.

He stood there a long moment thinking about Eleanor, the phone still at his ear, when suddenly he heard her voice.

“Harry, is that you?”

“Eleanor?”

“I’m here, Harry.”

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I didn’t think it would be for me.”

“When did you get there?”

“Last night. I’ve been waiting for you. Thanks for leaving the key.”

“You’re welcome… Eleanor, where’d you go?”

There was a beat of silence before she answered.

“I went back to Vegas. I needed to get my car…clear out my bank account, things like that. Where have you been all night?”

“Working. We have a new suspect. We’re holding him here. Did you go by your apartment?”

“No. There was no reason to. I just did what I had to do and drove back.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“That’s okay. I was worried about where you were, but I didn’t want to call you there in case you were in the middle of something.”

Bosch wanted to ask her what came next for them, but he felt such a sense of happiness that she was there in his home that he didn’t dare to ruin the moment.

“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be tied up,” he said.

Bosch heard the heavy doors in the station’s rear hallway open and bang shut. Footsteps were coming toward the squad room.

“Do you have to go?” Eleanor asked.

“Um…”

Edgar and Rider walked into the squad room. Rider carried a brown evidence bag with something heavy in it. Edgar carried a closed cardboard box across which someone had stenciled Xmas with a Magic Marker. He also had a broad smile on his face.

“Yeah,” Bosch said, “I think I better go.”

“Okay, Harry, I’ll see you.”

“You’ll be there?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Okay, Eleanor, I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

He hung up and looked up at his two partners. Edgar was still smiling.

“We got your Christmas present here, Harry,” Edgar said. “We got Powers right here in this box.”

“You got the boots?”

“No. No boots. We got better than boots.”

“Show me.”

Edgar lifted the lid off the box. Off the top he took out a manila envelope. He then tilted the box so that Bosch could look in. Bosch whistled.

“Merry Christmas,” Edgar said.

“You count it?” Bosch asked, his eyes still on the stacks of currency with rubber bands around them.

“Each bundle has a number on it,” Rider said. “You add them all up, it equals four hundred eighty thousand. It looks like it’s everything.”

“Not a bad present, eh Harry?” Edgar said excitedly.

“No. Where was it?”

“Attic crawl space,” Edgar said. “One of the last places we looked. Box was just sitting there in front of me as soon as I stuck my head up.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, what else?”

“Found these under his mattress.”

From the envelope Edgar withdrew a stack of photos. They were six by four in size and each had the date of the photograph digitally printed on the bottom left corner. Bosch put them on the table in front of them and looked through them, carefully picking them up by the corners. He hoped Edgar had handled them the same way.

The first photo was of Tony Aliso getting into a car at the valet stand in front of the Mirage. The next was of him walking to the door of Dolly’s. Following that was a series of shots of him outside Dolly’s talking to the man Aliso knew as Luke Goshen. It was dark outside in these shots and they were taken from a distance, but the neon-glutted entrance of the club was lit as brightly as daylight and Aliso and Goshen were easily recognizable.

Then there were photos from the same location but the date at the bottom corner had changed. They showed a young woman leaving the club and walking to Aliso’s car. Bosch recognized her. It was Layla. There were also pictures of Tony and Layla poolside at the Mirage. The last shot was of Tony leaning his deeply tanned body over Layla’s lounge chair and kissing her on the mouth.

Bosch looked up at Edgar and Rider. Edgar was smiling again. Rider wasn’t.

“Just like we thought,” Edgar said. “He cased this guy over there in Vegas. That shows he had the knowledge to set this whole thing up. Him and the widow. We got ’em, Harry. This shows premeditation, lying in wait, the works. We got ’em both, nine ways to Sunday.”

“Maybe.” He looked at Rider. “What’s up with you, Kiz?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. It just seems too easy. The place was very clean. No old boots, no sign that Veronica ever even set foot in that place. Then we find these so easy. It was like we were supposed to find it all. I mean, why would he take the time to get rid of the boots but leave the photos under the mattress? I can see him wanting to hang on to the money, but putting it in the attic seems pretty lame.”

She moved her hand toward the photos and the cash in a dismissive gesture. Bosch nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “He’s not that stupid.”

He thought about the similarity to the gun being planted on Goshen. That, too, turned out to be too easy.

“I think it’s a setup,” Bosch said. “Veronica did this. He took the photos for her. He probably told her to destroy them, but she didn’t. She hung on to them just in case. She probably snuck them back in under his bed and put the cash up in the attic. Was it easy to get to?”

“Easy enough,” Rider said. “Fold-down ladder.”

“Wait a minute, why would she set him up?” Edgar asked.

“Not from the start,” Bosch said. “It was like a fall-back position. If things started to go wrong, if we got too close, she had Powers out there ready to take the fall. Maybe when she sent Powers after the suitcase she went to his place with the photos and the cash. Who knows when it started? But I bet when I tell Powers we found this stuff in his house, his eyes are going to pop. Whaddaya got in the bag, Kiz, the camera?”

She nodded and put the bag on the table without opening it.

“Nikon with a telephoto on it, credit card receipt for his purchase of it.”

Bosch nodded and his thoughts strayed a bit. He was trying to think about how he was going to work the photos and money with Powers. It was their shot at breaking him. It had to be played right.

“Hold on, hold on,” Edgar said, a look of confusion on his face. “I still don’t get this. What makes you say it was a setup? Maybe he was holding the cash and the photos and they were going to split it all after the heat died down. Why does it have to be that she set him up?”

Bosch looked at Rider and then back at Edgar.

“’Cause Kiz is right. It’s too easy.”

“Not if he thought we didn’t have a clue, if he thought he was clear right up to the moment we jumped out of the bushes up there in the woods.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t think he would have played it the way he did when I was just talking to him. Not if he knew he had this stuff back at his place. I go with it being a setup. She’s putting it all on him. We pull her in and she’ll feed us some story about the guy being obsessed with her. Maybe, if she’s any kind of actress, she tells us, yes, she had an affair with him but then she broke it off. But he wouldn’t go away. He killed her old man so he could have her all to himself.”

Bosch leaned back and looked at them, waiting for their response.

“I think it’s good,” Rider said. “It could work.”

“Except we don’t believe it,” Bosch said.

“So what’s she get out of this?” Edgar asked, refusing to drop his disagreement. “She’s givin’ up the money puttin’ it in his pad. What’s that leave her?”

“The house, the cars, insurance,” Bosch said. “Whatever’s left of the company-and the chance to get away.”

But it was a weak answer and he knew it. A half million dollars was a lot of cash to use to set somebody up. It was the one flaw in the theory he had just spun.

“She got rid of her husband,” Rider said. “Maybe that was all that was important to her.”

“He’d been screwing around on her for years,” Edgar said. “Why now? What was different this time?”

“I don’t know,” Rider said. “But there was something different or something else we don’t know about. That’s what we have to find out.”

“Yeah, well, good luck,” Edgar said.

“I’ve got an idea,” Bosch said. “If anyone knows what that something else is, it’s Powers. I want to try to scam him and I think I know how. Kiz, you still got that tape, the one with Veronica in it?

“Casualty of Desire? Yeah. It’s in my drawer.”

“Go get it and set it up in the lieutenant’s office. I’m going to grab some more coffee and I’ll meet you there.”

Bosch stepped into interview room three with the box of cash turned so that the side that said Xmas on it was held against his chest. He hoped it looked like any common cardboard box. He watched Powers for a sign of recognition and got none. Powers was sitting just as Bosch had left him. Ramrod straight, his arms behind him as if by choice. He looked at Bosch with deadpan eyes that were ready and waiting for the next go-round. Bosch put the box on the floor where it would be shielded from view, pulled out the chair and sat across from him again. He then reached down, opened the box and took out a tape recorder and a file folder. He put them on the table in plain sight.

“I told you, Bosch, no taping. If you got the camera on the other side of the glass going, then you’re ripping off my rights, too.”

“No camera, no tape, Powers. This is just to play you something, that’s all. Now, where were we?”

“We were to the point of put up or shut up. You cut me loose or you get my lawyer in here.”

“Well, actually, a couple of things have come up. I thought you might want to know about them first. You know, before you make a decision like that.”

“Fuck that. I’m through with this shit. Get me the phone.”

“Do you own a camera, Powers?”

“I said get-a camera? What about it?”

“Do you own a camera? It’s a pretty straightforward question.”

“Yes. Everybody owns a camera. What about it?”

Bosch studied him for a moment. He could feel the momentum and control start to maybe shift just a bit. It was coming across the table from Powers. He could feel it. Bosch played a thin smile on his face. He wanted Powers to know that from this point on it was slipping away from him.

“Did you take the camera with you when you went to Vegas last March?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I take it on all my vacations. Didn’t know it was a crime. The fucking legislature, what will they think of next?”

Bosch let him have his smile but didn’t return it.

“Is that what you called it?” he said quietly. “A vacation?”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I called it.”

“That’s funny, because that’s not what Veronica is calling it.”

“I don’t know anything about that or her.”

His eyes momentarily looked away from Bosch. It was the first time, and again Bosch felt the balance shifting. He was playing it right. He felt it. Things were shifting.

“Sure you know about it, Powers. And you know her pretty good, too. She just told us all about it. She’s in the other room right now. Turns out she was weaker than I thought. My money had been on you. You know the saying, the bigger they are the harder they fall, all of that. I thought you’d be the one but it was her. Edgar and Rider broke her down a little while ago. Amazing how crime scene photos can work on somebody’s guilty conscience. She told us everything, Powers. Everything.”

“You’re so full of bullshit, Bosch, and it’s getting pretty old. Where’s the phone?”

“This is how she tells it. You-”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“You met her when you went up there that night to take the burglary report. One thing led to another and pretty soon you two were having a little romance. An affair to remember. Only she came to her senses and broke it off. She still loved ol’ Tony. She knew he traveled a lot, strayed a lot, but she was used to that. She needed him. So she cut you off. Only, and this is according to her, you wouldn’t be cut off. You kept after her, calling her, following her when she’d leave the estate up there. It was getting scary. I mean, what could she do? Go to Tony and say this guy I had an affair with is following me all the time? She-”

“This is so much bullshit, Bosch. It’s a joke!”

“Then you started following Tony. You see, he was your problem. He was in the way. So you did your homework. You followed him to Vegas and you caught him in the act. You knew just what he was up to and how to put him down in a way that we’d go down the wrong path. Trunk music, they call it. Only you couldn’t carry the tune, Powers. We’re on to you. With her help, we’re going to put you down.”

Powers was looking down at the table. The skin around his eyes and his jawline had drawn tight.

“This is so much crap,” he said without looking up. “I’m tired of listening to it and to you. She’s not in the other room. She’s sitting up there in that big house on the hill. This is the oldest trick in the book.”

Powers looked up and a twisted smile cracked his face.

“You try to pull this shit on a cop? I can’t believe it. This is really weak, man. You’re weak. You’re embarrassing yourself here.”

Bosch reached over to the tape recorder and pushed the play button. Veronica Aliso’s voice filled the tiny room.

“It was him. He’s crazy. I couldn’t stop him until it was too late. Then I couldn’t tell anyone because it…it would look like I-”

Bosch turned it off.

“That’s enough,” he said. “It’s out of line for me to even play that for you. But I thought, cop to cop, you should know where you stand.”

Bosch silently watched Powers as he did a slow burn. Bosch could see the anger boiling up behind his eyes. He didn’t seem to move a muscle, yet he seemed all at once to become as hard as a stack of lumber. He finally was able to hold himself back, though, and compose himself.

“It’s just her word,” he said in a quiet voice. “There’s no corroboration of anything. It’s a fantasy, Bosch. Her word against mine.”

“It could be. Except we have these.”

Bosch opened the file and threw the stack of photos in front of Powers. Then he reached across and carefully fanned them on the table so they could be seen and recognized.

“That backs up a good part of her story, don’t you think?”

Bosch watched as Powers studied the photographs. Once again Powers seemed to go to the edge with an interior rage, but once more he contained it.

“It doesn’t back up shit,” he said. “She could’ve taken these herself. Anybody could have. Just because she gives you a stack of…She’s got you people wrapped up, doesn’t she? You’re buying every line she feeds you.”

“Maybe that would be so, only she didn’t give us the photos.”

Bosch reached into the file again and pulled out a copy of the search warrant. He reached over and put it on top of the photos.

“Five hours ago we faxed that to Judge Warren Lambert at his home in the Palisades. He faxed it back signed. Edgar and Rider have been in your little Hollywood bungalow most of the night. Among the items seized was a Nikon camera with telephoto lens. And these photos. They were under your mattress, Powers.”

He paused here to let it all sink in behind Powers’s darkening eyes.

“Oh, and one other thing we found.” Bosch reached down and brought the box up. “This was in the attic with the Christmas stuff.”

He dumped the contents of the box on the table and the stacks of cash tumbled every which way, some falling to the floor. Bosch shook the box to make sure it had all come out and then dropped it to the floor. He looked at Powers. His eyes were wild, darting over the thick bundles. Bosch knew he had him. And he also knew in his gut that he had Veronica Aliso to thank for that.

“Now, personally, I don’t think you are this stupid,” Bosch said quietly. “You know, to keep the pictures and all this cash right in your house. Of course, I’ve seen crazier things in my time. But if I was betting, I’d bet that you didn’t know all of this was there because you didn’t put it there. But, hey, either way it works fine for me. We’ve got you and we’ll clear this one, that’s all I care about. It would be nice to grab her, too, but that’s okay. We’ll need her for you. With the photos and her story and all the other stuff we’ve talked about here, I think we got you for the murder easy. There’s also lying-in-wait to tack on. That makes it a special circumstances case, Powers. You’re looking at one of two things. The needle or LWP.”

He pronounced the last acronym el-wop, knowing that any cop, just as any criminal in the system, would know it meant life without parole.

“Anyway,” Bosch continued, “I guess I’ll go get that phone brought in here so you can call your lawyer. Better make it a good one. And none of those grandstanders from the O.J. case. You need to get yourself a lawyer who does his best work outside of the courtroom. A negotiator.”

He stood up and turned to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back at Powers.

“You know, I feel bad, Powers. You being a cop and all, I was sort of hoping you’d catch the break instead of her. I feel like we’re hitting the wrong person with the hammer. But I guess that’s life in the big city. Somebody’s got to be hit with it.”

He turned back to the door and opened it.

“Bitch!” Powers said with a quiet forcefulness.

Then he whispered something under his breath that Bosch couldn’t hear. Bosch looked back at him. He knew enough not to say a word.

“It was her idea,” Powers said. “All of it. She conned me and now she’s conning you.”

Bosch waited a beat but there was nothing else.

“Are you saying you want to talk to me?”

“Yeah, Bosch, have a seat. Maybe we can work something out.”

At nine Bosch sat in the lieutenant’s office, Billets behind the desk, bringing her up to date. He had an empty Styrofoam cup in his hand, but he didn’t drop it in the trash can because he needed something to remind him that he needed more coffee. He was beat tired and the lines beneath his eyes were so pronounced they almost hurt. His mouth tasted sour from all the coffee and cigarettes. He’d eaten nothing but candy bars in the last twenty hours and his stomach was finally protesting. But he was a happy man. He had won the last round with Powers and in this kind of battle the last round was the only one that mattered.

“So,” Billets said, “he told you everything?”

“His version of it,” Bosch said. “He lays everything on her and that’s to be expected. Remember, he thinks she’s in the other room laying everything on him. So he’s making her out to be the big bad black widow, like he never had an impure thought in his life until he ran across her.”

He brought the cup up to his mouth but then realized it was empty.

“But once we get her in here and she knows he’s talking, we’ll probably get her version,” he said.

“When did Jerry and Kiz leave?”

Bosch looked at his watch.

“About forty minutes ago. They should be back with her any time.”

“Why didn’t you go up to get her?”

“I don’t know. I figured I took Powers, they should have her. Spread it around, you know?”

“Better be careful. You keep acting like that and you’ll lose your rep as a hardass.”

Bosch smiled and looked down into his cup.

“So what’s the gist of his story?” Billets asked.

“The gist is pretty much how we figured it. He went up there to take a burglary report that day and it went from there. He says she put the moves on him and next thing you know they had a thing going. He started taking more and more patrol swings through the neighborhood and she was stopping by his bungalow in the mornings after Tony went to work or while he was in Vegas. The way he describes it, she was reeling him in. The sex was good and exotic. He was hooked up pretty good.”

“Then she asked him to tail Tony.”

“Right. That first trip Powers took to Vegas was a straight job. She asked him to tail Tony. He did and he came back with a bunch of photos of Tony and the girl and a lot of questions about who Tony was meeting with over there and why. He wasn’t stupid. He could tell Tony was into something. He says Veronica filled him in, knew every detail, knew all the OC guys by name. She also told him how much money was involved. That was when the plan came together. She told Powers that Tony had to go, that it would be just them afterward, them and a lot of money. She told him Tony had been skimming. Skimming off the skim. For years. There was at least a couple million in the pot plus whatever they took off Tony when they put him down.”

Bosch stood up and continued the story while pacing in front of her desk. He was too tired to sit for very long without being overcome with fatigue.

“Anyway, that was what the second trip was for. Powers went over and watched Tony one more time. It was research. He also tailed the guy Tony made the pickups from. Luke Goshen, who he obviously had no idea was an agent. They decided Goshen would be the patsy and worked out the plan to make it look like a mob hit. Trunk music.”

“It’s pretty complicated.”

“Yeah, that it is. He says the planning was all hers, and I kind of think he might be telling the truth there. You ask me, Powers is smart but not that smart. This whole thing was Veronica’s plan and he became a willing player. Only she had a backdoor built into it that Powers didn’t know about.”

“He was the backdoor.”

“Yeah. She set him up to take the fall, but only if we got too close. He said he’d given her a key to his place. It’s a bungalow over on Sierra Bonita. She must’ve gone over there sometime this week, shoved the photos under the mattress and stuck the box of money in the attic. Smart woman. Nice setup. When Jerry and Kiz get her in here, I know just what she’ll say. She’s going to say it was all him, that he became infatuated with her, that they had an affair and that she broke it off. He went ahead and knocked off her husband. When she realized what had happened, she couldn’t say anything. He forced her to go along with it. She had no choice. He was a cop and he told her he could pin it all on her if she didn’t go along.”

“It’s a good story. In fact, it still might work with a jury. She could walk on this.”

“Maybe. We still have some things to do.”

“What about the skim?”

“Good question. Nothing like the kind of money he’s talking about showed up on Aliso’s bank accounts. Powers said she said it was in a safe deposit box but she never told him where. It’s got to be somewhere. We’ll find it.”

“If it exists.”

“I think it does. She planted a half million in Powers’s place to put him in the frame. That’s a lot of money to spend on setting him up, unless you happen to have a couple million more stashed someplace. That’s what we-”

Bosch looked through the glass into the squad room. Edgar and Rider were walking toward the lieutenant’s office. Veronica Aliso was not with them. They came into the office with urgent looks on their faces and Bosch knew what they were going to say.

“She’s gone,” Edgar said.

Bosch and Billets just stared at them.

“Looks like she split last night,” Edgar said. “Her cars are still there but there was nobody at the house. We slipped in a back door and it’s empty, man.”

“She take her clothes, jewelry?” Bosch asked.

“Doesn’t look like it. She’s just gone.”

“You check the gate?”

“Yeah, we checked at the gate. She had two visitors yesterday. First was a courier at four-fifteen. Legal Eagle Messenger Service. Guy was there about five minutes, in and out. Then a visitor last night. Late. Guy gave the name John Galvin. She had already called the gate and given the same name and told them to let him through when he showed up. They took his plate down and we ran it. It’s Hertz out of Vegas. We’ll put a call in. Anyway, Galvin stayed until one this morning. Just about the time we were in the woods hooking up Powers, he split. She probably went with him.”

“We called the guard on duty at the time,” Rider said. “He couldn’t remember if Galvin left alone or not. He doesn’t specifically remember seeing Mrs. Aliso last night, but she could have been down in the backseat.”

“Do we know who her attorney is?” Billets asked.

“Yes,” Rider said, “Neil Denton, Century City.”

“Okay, Jerry, you work the trace on the Hertz rental and, Kiz, you try to run down Denton and see if you can find out what was so important that he had to messenger it over to her on Saturday.”

“All right,” Edgar said. “But I got a bad feeling. I think she’s in the wind.”

“Well, then we have to go into the wind to find her,” Billets said. “Go to it.”

Edgar and Rider went back out to the homicide table and Bosch stood silent for a few moments, thinking about this latest development.

“Should we have put people on her?” Billets asked.

“Well, looking back, it seems that way. But we were off the books. We didn’t have the people. Besides, we didn’t really have anything on her until a couple hours ago.”

Billets nodded, a pained expression on her face.

“If they don’t get a line on her in the next fifteen minutes, put it out on the air.”

“Right.”

“Listen, getting back to Powers, you think he’s holding anything back?”

“Hard to say. Probably. There’s still the question about why this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Aliso had been going over to Vegas for years and bringing back suitcases full of money. He’d been skimming for years, according to Powers, and also had been having his share of the women over there. Veronica knew all of this. She had to. So what was it that made her do it now, rather than last year or next year?”

“Maybe she just got fed up. Maybe this was just the right time. Powers came along and it clicked.”

“Maybe. I asked Powers and he said he didn’t know. But I think maybe he was holding back. I’m going to take another run at him.”

Billets didn’t respond.

“There’s still some sort of secret we don’t know about,” Bosch continued. “There’s something there. I’m hoping she’ll tell it. If we find her.”

Billets dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

“You have Powers on tape?” she asked.

“Audio and video. Kiz was watching in room four. As soon as he said he wanted to talk she started it all rolling.”

“Did you advise him again? On the tape?”

“Yeah, it’s all on there. He’s sealed up pretty good. You want to watch it, I’ll get the tape.”

“No. I don’t even want to look at him if I can help it. You didn’t promise him anything, did you?”

Bosch was about to answer but stopped. There was the sound of muffled yelling that he could tell was coming from Powers, still sequestered in room three. He looked through the glass of the lieutenant’s office and saw Edgar get up from the homicide table and go down the hall to check it out.

“He probably wants his lawyer now,” Bosch said. “Well, it’s a little late for that…Anyway, no, I made no promises. I did tell him I’d talk to the DA about dropping special circs, but that’s going to be tough. With what he told me in there, we can take our pick. Conspiracy to commit, lying in wait, murder for hire maybe.”

“I guess I should get a DA in here.”

“Yeah. If you don’t have anyone in mind or anybody you owe a hot case to, put in a request for Roger Goff. This is his kind of case and I’ve owed him one for a while. He won’t blow it.”

“I know Roger. I’ll ask for him… I have to call out the brass, too. It’s not every day you get to call a deputy chief and tell him not only have your people been running an investigation they were specifically told to stay away from, but that they’ve arrested a cop to boot. And for murder, no less.”

Bosch smiled. He would not relish having to make such a call.

“It’s really going to hit the fan this time,” he said. “One more black eye for the department. By the way, they didn’t seize any of it because it’s not related to this case, but Jerry and Kiz found some scary stuff in Powers’s place. Nazi paraphernalia, white-power stuff. You might alert the brass about that, so they can do with it what they want.”

“Thanks for telling me. I’ll talk to Irving. I’m sure he won’t want that to see the light of day.”

Edgar leaned in through the open door.

“Powers says he’s got to take a leak and can’t hold it any longer.”

He was looking at Billets.

“Well, take him,” she said.

“Keep him hooked,” Bosch added.

“How’s he gonna piss, his hands behind his back? Don’t be expecting me to be taking it out for him. No way.”

Billets laughed.

“Just move the cuffs to the front,” Bosch said. “Give me a second to finish in here and I’ll be right there.”

“Okay, I’ll be in three.”

Edgar left and Bosch watched him through the glass as he walked to the hallway leading to the interview rooms. Bosch looked back at Billets, who was still smiling at Edgar’s comical protest. Bosch put a serious look on his face.

“You know, you can use me when you make that call.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you want to say you didn’t know about any of this until I called you this morning with the bad news, that’s cool with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We cleared a murder and got a killer cop off the street. If they can’t see that the good in this outweighs the bad, then…well, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

Bosch smiled and nodded.

“You’re cool, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“And it’s Grace.”

“Right. Grace.”

Bosch was thinking about how much he liked Billets as he walked down the short hallway to the interview rooms and into the open door of room three. Edgar was just closing the cuffs on Powers’s wrists. His hands were in front of him now.

“Do me a favor, Bosch,” Powers said. “Let me use the can in the front hallway.”

“What for?”

“So nobody’ll see me in the back. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. Besides, you might have a problem if people don’t like what they see.”

Bosch nodded. Powers had a point. If they took him to the locker room, then all the cops in the watch office would likely see them and there would be questions, maybe even anger from some of the cops who didn’t know what was going on. The bathroom in the front hallway was a public rest room, but this early on a Sunday morning it would likely be empty and they could take Powers in and out of there without being seen.

“Okay, let’s go,” Bosch said. “To the front.”

They walked him past the front counter and down the hallway past the administration offices, which were empty and closed for the day. While Bosch stayed with Powers in the hall, Edgar checked the rest room out.

“It’s empty,” he said, holding the door open from inside.

Bosch followed Powers in and the big cop went to the furthest of three urinals. Bosch stayed by the door and Edgar took a position on the other side of Powers by the row of sinks. When Powers was finished at the urinal, he stepped toward one of the sinks. As he walked, Bosch saw that his right shoelace was untied and so did Edgar.

“Tie your shoe, Powers,” Edgar said. “You trip and fall and break your pretty face, I don’t want any cryin’ ’bout po-lice brutality.”

Powers stopped and looked down at the shoelace on the floor and then at Edgar.

“Sure,” he said.

Powers first washed his hands, used a paper towel to dry them and then brought his right foot up on the edge of the sink to tie his shoe.

“New shoes,” Edgar said. “Laces on ’em always come undone, don’t they?”

Bosch couldn’t see Powers’s face because the cop’s back was turned toward the door. But he was looking up at Edgar.

“Fuck you, nigger.”

It was almost as if he had slapped Edgar, whose face immediately filled with revulsion and anger. He looked over at Bosch, a quick glance to judge whether Bosch was going to do anything about his plan to hit Powers. But it was all the time Powers needed. He sprang away from the sink and threw his body into Edgar, pinning him against the white-tiled wall. His cuffed hands came up and the left one grabbed a handful of the front of Edgar’s shirt while the right pressed the barrel of a small gun into the stunned detective’s throat.

Bosch had covered half of the distance to them when he saw the gun and Powers began to shout.

“Back off, Bosch. Back off or you got a dead partner. You want that?”

Powers had turned his head so that he was looking back at Bosch. Bosch stopped and raised his hands away from his body.

“That’s it,” Powers said. “Now this is what you’re going to do. Take your gun out real slowly and drop it in that first sink there.”

Bosch made no move.

“Do it. Now.”

Powers spoke with measured force, careful to keep his voice low.

Bosch looked at the tiny gun in Powers’s hand. He recognized it as a Raven.25, a favored throw-down gun among patrol cops going back to at least his own time in a uniform. It was small-it looked like a toy in Powers’s hand-but deadly and it fit snugly into a sock or boot, virtually unseen with the pants leg pulled down. As Bosch came to the realization that Edgar and Rider had not completely searched Powers, he also knew that a shot from the Raven at point-blank range would certainly kill Edgar. It was against all his instincts to give up his weapon, but he saw no alternative. Powers was desperate and Bosch knew desperate men didn’t think things out. They went against the odds. They were killers. With two fingers he slowly removed his gun and dropped it into the sink.

“That’s real good, Bosch. Now I want you to get on the floor underneath the sinks.”

Bosch did as he was told, never taking his eyes off Powers as he moved.

“Edgar,” Powers said. “Now your turn. You can just go ahead and drop yours on the floor.”

Edgar’s gun hit the tile.

“Now, you get under there with your partner. That’s it.”

“Powers, this is crazy,” Bosch said. “Where’re you going to go? You can’t run.”

“Who’s talking about running, Bosch? Take out your cuffs and put one on your left wrist.”

After Bosch had complied, Powers told him to loop the cuffs through one of the sink trap pipes. He then told Edgar to put the free cuff around his right wrist. He did so and then Powers smiled.

“There, that’s good. That ought to hold you guys for a few minutes. Now, give me your keys. Both of you, throw ’em out here.”

Powers picked Edgar’s set up off the floor and unlocked the cuffs around his wrists. He quickly massaged them to get the circulation going. He was smiling but Bosch wondered if he even knew it.

“Now, let’s see.”

He reached into the sink and grabbed Bosch’s gun.

“This is a nice one, Bosch. Nice weight, balance. Beats mine. Mind if I borrow it for a couple minutes?”

Bosch knew then what he was planning to do. He was going for Veronica. Bosch thought of Kiz sitting at the homicide table, her back to the front counter. And Billets in her office. They wouldn’t see him until it was too late.

“She’s not here, Powers,” he said.

“What? Who?”

“Veronica. It was a scam. We never even picked her up.”

Powers was silent as the smile dropped away and was replaced with a serious look of concentration. Bosch knew what he was thinking.

“The voice came from one of her movies. I taped it off the videotape. You go back to those interview rooms and it’s a dead end. There’s nobody back there and no way out.”

Bosch saw the same tightening of skin around Powers’s face that he had seen before. His face grew dark with blood and anger, then, inexplicably, the smile suddenly creased across it.

“You smart fucker, Bosch. Is that so? You ‘spect me to believe she’s not there? Maybe this is the con, and not before. See what I’m saying?”

“It’s no con. She isn’t there. We were going to pick her up with what you told us. Went up the hill an hour ago but she’s not there either. She left last night.”

“If she’s not already here, then how…”

“That part was no scam. The money and pictures were in your house. If you didn’t put them there, then she did. She’s setting you up. Why don’t you just put the gun down and let’s start this over. You apologize to Edgar for what you called him and we drop this little incident.”

“Oh, I see. You drop the escape but I still get hit with the murder.”

“I told you, we’re going to talk to the DA. We got one coming in right now. He’s a friend. He’ll do right by you. She’s the one we really want.”

“You fucking asshole!” Powers said loudly. He then brought his voice back into check. “Don’t you see that I want her? You think you beat me? You think you broke me down in there? You didn’t win, Bosch. I talked because I wanted to talk. I broke you, man, but you didn’t know it. You started trusting me because you needed me. You should’ve never moved the cuffs, brother.”

He was silent a moment, letting that sink in.

“Now I’ve got an appointment with that bitch that I’m going to keep no matter what. She ain’t here, then I’ll go find her.”

“She could be anywhere.”

“So could I, Bosch, and she won’t see me coming. I have to go.”

Powers grabbed the plastic bag out of the trash can and emptied it on the floor. He put Bosch’s gun into the bag, then turned the faucets in all three sinks on full blast. The cascading water created a cacophony as it echoed off the tile walls. Powers picked up Edgar’s gun and put it in the bag. He then wrapped the bag around itself several times, concealing the two guns inside. He put the Raven in his front pocket for easy access, threw the handcuff keys into one of the urinals and flushed each one. Without even looking at the two men handcuffed under the sink, he headed to the door.

“Adios, dipshits,” he threw over his shoulder and then he was gone.

Bosch looked at Edgar. He knew that if they yelled, it was likely they wouldn’t be heard. It was a Sunday, the administration wing was empty. And in the bureau there were only Billets and Rider. With the water running, their shouts would probably be unintelligible. Billets and Rider would probably think it was the normal yelling from the drunk tank.

Bosch swiveled around and braced his feet on the wall beneath the sink counter. He grabbed the trap pipe so that he could use his legs as leverage in an attempt to pull the pipe free. But the pipe was burning hot.

“Son of a bitch!” Bosch yelled as he let go. “He turned the hot water on.”

“What are we going to do? He’s getting away.”

“Your arms are longer. See if you can reach up there and turn off the water. It’s too hot. I can’t grab the pipe.”

With Bosch feeding his arm almost up to the elbow through the pipe loop, Edgar was barely able to touch the faucet. It took him several seconds to turn the water down to a trickle.

“Now turn on the cold,” Bosch said. “Cool this thing down.”

It took another few seconds, but then Bosch was ready to try again. He grabbed the pipe and pushed against the wall with his legs. As he did this, Edgar squeezed his hands around the pipe and did the same. The added muscle broke the pipe free along the seal beneath the sink. Water sloshed down on them as they threaded the cuffs chain through the pipe break. They got up and slid along the tile to the urinal, where Bosch saw his keys on the bottom grate. He grabbed them up and fumbled with them until he had the cuff off. He handed the keys to Edgar and ran toward the door, sloshing through the water that had completely spread across it.

“Turn off the water,” he yelled as he hit the door.

Bosch ran down the hallway and vaulted over the detective bureau front counter. The squad room was empty and through the glass he saw the lieutenant’s office was vacant. He then heard a loud pounding and the muffled shouts of Rider and Billets. He ran down the hallway to the interview rooms and found all the doors open but one. He knew Powers had checked for Veronica Aliso anyway after locking Billets and Rider in room thrree. He opened the door to three and then quickly ran back through the squad room into the station house’s rear hallway. He slammed through the heavy metal door and into the back parking yard. Instinctively reaching to his empty shoulder holster, he scanned the parking lot and the open bays of the garage. There was no sign of Powers, but there were two patrol officers standing near the gas pumps. Bosch focused on them.

“You seen Powers?”

“Yeah,” said the older of the two. “He just left. With our fucking car. What the fuck’s going on?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and cursed silently to himself.

Six hours later, Bosch, Edgar and Rider sat at the homicide table, silently watching the meeting taking place in the lieutenant’s office. Huddled in the small office like people on a bus were Billets, Captain LeValley, Deputy Chief Irving, three IAD investigators including Chastain, and the chief of police and his administrative aide. Deputy District Attorney Roger Goff had been consulted on the speakerphone-Bosch had heard his voice through the open door. But then the door was closed and Bosch was sure the group was deciding the fate of the three detectives sitting outside.

The police chief stood in the middle of the cramped room with his arms folded and his head down. He was the last to arrive, and it looked as if he was getting the run-down from the others. Occasionally he nodded, but it didn’t look to Bosch as though he was saying much at all. Bosch knew that the main issue they were discussing was how to handle the problem with Powers. There was a killer cop on the loose. Going to the media with that would be an exercise in self-flagellation, but Bosch saw no way around it. They had looked in all the likely places for Powers and had not found him. The patrol car he had commandeered had been found abandoned up in the hills on Fareholm Drive. Where he had gone from there was anyone’s guess. Surveillance teams stationed outside his bungalow and the Aliso house, as well as the lawyer Neil Denton’s house and office, had produced nothing. It was now time to go to the media, to put the rogue cop’s picture on the six o’clock news. Bosch guessed that the reason the police chief had showed up was that he planned to call a press conference. Otherwise he would have left the whole thing for Irving to deal with.

Bosch realized Rider had said something.

“Excuse me?”

“I said what are you going to do with your time?”

“I don’t know. Depends on how much we get. If it’s just one DP, I’ll use it to finish work on my house. If it’s longer than two, I’ll have to see about making some money somehow.”

A DP, or deployment period, was fifteen days. Suspensions were usually handed out in such increments when the offense was serious. Bosch was pretty sure the chief wouldn’t be handing out minor suspensions to them.

“He isn’t going to fire us, is he, Harry?” Edgar asked.

“Doubt it. But it all depends on how they’re telling it to him.”

Bosch looked back at the office window just as the chief was looking out at him. The chief looked away, not a good sign. Bosch had never met him and never expected that he would. He was an outsider brought in to appease the community. Not because of any particular police administrative skills, but because they needed an outsider. He was a large black man with most of his weight around his waist. Cops who didn’t like him, and there were many, often referred to him as Chief Mud Slide. Bosch didn’t know what cops who liked him called him.

“I just want to say I’m sorry, Harry,” Rider said.

“Sorry about what?” Bosch asked.

“About missing the gun. I patted him down. I ran my hands down his legs but somehow I missed it. I don’t understand it.”

“It was small enough that he could fit it in his boot,” Bosch said. “It’s not all on you, Kiz. We all had our chances. Me and Jerry fucked up in the rest room. We should’ve been watching him better.”

She nodded but Bosch could tell she still felt miserable. He looked up and saw that the meeting in the lieutenant’s office was beginning to break up. As the police chief and his aide, followed by LeValley and the IAD dicks, filed out, they left the bureau through the front entrance. It would make for an out-of-the-way walk if their cars were parked in the station lot out back, but it meant they didn’t have to walk by the homicide table and acknowledge Bosch and the others. Another bad sign, he though.

Only Irving and Billets remained in the office after it cleared. Billets then looked out at Bosch and signaled the three of them into her office. They got up slowly and headed in. Edgar and Rider sat down but Bosch stayed on his feet.

“Chief,” Billets said, giving Irving the floor.

“Okay, I’ll give it to you the way it was just given to me,” Irving said.

He looked down at a piece of paper on which he had taken a few notes.

“For conducting an unauthorized investigation and for failure to follow procedure in searching and transporting a prisoner, each of you is suspended without pay two deployment periods and suspended with pay for two deployment periods. These are to run consecutively. That’s two months. And, of course, a formal reprimand goes into each of your jackets. Per procedure, you can appeal this to a Board of Rights.”

He waited a beat. It was heavier than Bosch had expected, but he showed nothing on his face. He heard Edgar audibly exhale. As far as the appeal went, disciplinary action by the police chief was rarely overturned. It would require two of the three captains on the Board of Rights to vote against their commander in chief. Overruling an IAD investigator was one thing, overruling the chief was political suicide.

“However,” Irving continued, “the suspensions are being held in abeyance by the chief pending further developments and evaluation.”

There was a moment of silence while the last sentence was computed.

“What does he mean, abeyance?” Edgar asked.

“It means the chief is offering you a break,” Irving said. “He wants to see how things fall out over the next day or two. Each of you is to come to work tomorrow and proceed with the investigation where you can. We talked with the DA’s office. They’re willing to file on Powers. Get the paperwork over there tomorrow first thing. We’ve put the word out and the chief will take it to the media in a couple hours. If we’re lucky, we’ll get this guy before he finds the woman or does any other damage. And if we’re lucky, you three will probably be lucky.”

“What about Veronica Aliso, aren’t they going to file on her?”

“Not yet. Not until we have Powers back. Goff said that without Powers, the taped confession is worthless. He won’t be able to use it against her without Powers on the stand to introduce it or her being able to confront a witness against her.”

Bosch looked down at the floor.

“So without him, she walks.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

Bosch nodded his head.

“What’s he going to say?” he asked. “The chief, I mean.”

“He’s going to tell it like it is. You people will come out okay in some parts, not so okay in others. Overall, it’s not going to be a good day for this department.”

“Is that why we’re getting hit for two months? Because we’re the messengers?”

Irving looked at him a long moment, his jaw clenched, before answering.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a reply.”

He looked at Rider and Edgar and said, “You two can go now. You’re finished here. I need to discuss another matter with Detective Bosch.”

Bosch watched them go and prepared for more of Irving’s ire about the last comment. He wasn’t sure why he had said it. He knew it would bait the deputy chief.

But after Rider closed the door to the office, Irving spoke of another matter.

“Detective, I wanted you to know that I’ve already talked to the federal people and we’re all squared away on that.”

“How is that?”

“I told them that with today’s developments it has become pretty clear-make that crystal clear-that you had nothing to do with planting evidence on their man. I told them it was Powers and that we were terminating that particular aspect of our internal investigation of your conduct.”

“Fine, Chief. Thanks.”

Thinking that was it, Bosch made a move toward the door.

“Detective, there is one other thing.”

Bosch turned back to him.

“In discussing this matter with the chief of police, there is still one other aspect that bothers him.”

“And what is that?”

“The investigation started by Detective Chastain brought in ancillary information about your association with a convicted felon. It’s troubling to me, too. I’d like to be able to get some assurance from you that this is not going to continue. I’d like to take that assurance to the chief.”

Bosch was silent a moment.

“I can’t give you that.”

Irving looked down at the floor. He was working the thick muscles of his jaw again.

“You disappoint me, Detective Bosch,” he finally said. “This department has done a lot by you. So have I. I’ve stood by you through some tough spots. You’ve never been easy, but you have a talent that I think this department and this city certainly need. I suppose that makes you worth it. Do you want to possibly alienate me and others in this department?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then take my advice and do the right thing, son. You know what that is. That’s all I’m going to say on that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s all.”

When Bosch got to his house, he saw a dusty Ford Escort parked at the curb out front. It had Nevada plates. Inside the house, Eleanor Wish was sitting at the table in the small dining room with the classified ads section of the Sunday Times. She had a lit cigarette in the ashtray next to the paper and she was using a black marker to circle want ads. Bosch saw all of this and his heart jumped into a higher gear. What it meant to him was that if she was looking for a job, then she might be digging in, staying in L.A. and staying with him. To top it all off, the house was filled with the aroma of an Italian restaurant, heavy on the garlic.

He came around the table and put his hand on her shoulder and tentatively kissed her on the cheek. She patted his hand. As he straightened up, though, he noticed she was looking at ads for furnished apartments in Santa Monica, not the employment section.

“What’s cooking?” he asked.

“My spaghetti sauce. You remember it?”

He nodded that he did but he really didn’t. His memory of the days he had spent with her five years before were all centered on her, the moments they were intimate, and what happened afterward.

“How was Las Vegas?” he asked, just to be saying something.

“It was Vegas. The kind of place you never miss. If I never go back that will be fine with me.”

“You’re looking for a place here?”

“I thought I might as well start looking.”

She had lived in Santa Monica before. Bosch remembered her apartment with the bedroom balcony. You could smell the sea and if you leaned out over the railing, you could look down Ocean Park Boulevard and even see it. He knew she couldn’t afford a place like that now. She was probably looking at the listings east of Lincoln.

“You know there’s no hurry,” he said. “You can stay here. Nice view, it’s private. Why don’t you…I don’t know, take your time.”

She looked up at him but decided not to say what she was about to say. Bosch could tell.

“Do you want a beer?” she asked instead. “I bought some more. They’re in the fridge.”

He nodded, letting her escape from the moment, and went into the kitchen. He saw a Crock-Pot on the counter and wondered if she had bought it or brought it back with her from Las Vegas. He opened the refrigerator and smiled. She knew him. She had bought bottles of Henry Weinhard’s. He took two out and brought them back to the dining room. He opened hers and gave it to her, then his own. They both started to speak at the same time.

“Sorry, go ahead,” she said.

“No, you.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, what?”

“I was just going to ask how things went today.”

“Oh. Well, they went good and bad. We broke the guy down and he told us the story. He gave up the wife.”

“Tony Aliso’s wife?”

“Yeah. It was her plan all along. According to him. The Vegas stuff was just a misdirection.”

“That’s great. What’s the bad part?”

“Well, first of all, our guy is a cop and-”

“Oh, shit!”

“Yeah, but it’s even worse. He got away from us today.”

“Got away? What do you mean got away?”

“I mean he escaped. Right out of the station. He had a pistol, a little Raven, in his boot. We missed it when we hooked him up. Edgar and me took him into the can, and he must’ve stepped on his shoelace while we were going over. You know, on purpose. Then, when Edgar noticed it and told him to tie his shoe, he came up with the Raven. He got away from us, went into the back lot and just took a squad car. He was still in uniform.”

“Jesus, and they didn’t find him yet?”

“That was about eight hours ago. He’s in the wind.”

“Well, where could he go in a patrol car and in a uniform?”

“Oh, he dumped the car-they already found that-and I doubt, wherever he is, he’s in the uniform. It looks like he was into the far-right, white-supremacy thing. He probably knew people who’d get him clothes, no questions asked.”

“Sounds like a helluva cop.”

“Yeah. It’s funny. He was the guy who found the body, you know, last week. It was on his beat. And because he was a cop, I didn’t give him a second thought. I knew that day he was an asshole, but I didn’t even look at him at all as anything other than the cop who found the stiff. And he must’ve known that. And he timed it so that we’d be in a rush out there. He was pretty smart about it.”

“Or she was.”

“Yeah. More likely it was her. But, anyway, I feel more, I don’t know, upset or disappointed about that first day, that I didn’t take a look at him, than I do about letting him get away today. I should’ve looked at him. More often than not the one who finds the body is the one. His uniform blinded me to that.”

She got up from the table and came over to him. She put her arms around his neck and smiled up at him.

“You’ll get him. Don’t worry.”

He nodded. They kissed.

“What were you going to say before?” she asked. “When we both talked at once.”

“Oh…I don’t remember now.”

“Must not have been important, then.”

“I wanted to tell you to stay here with me.”

She put her head down against his chest so that he couldn’t see her eyes.

“Harry…”

“Just to see how it works. I feel like…it’s almost like all this time hasn’t gone by. I want-I just want to be with you. I can take care of you. You can feel safe and you can have all the time you need to make a new start here. Find a job, whatever you want to do.”

She stepped back from him and looked up into his eyes. The warning Irving had given him was the furthest thing from his mind. Right now all he cared about was keeping her close and doing whatever it took to accomplish that.

“But a lot of time has gone by, Harry. We just can’t jump in like this.”

Bosch nodded and lowered his eyes. He knew she was right but he still didn’t care.

“I want you, Harry,” she said. “Nobody else. But I want to take it slow. So that we’re sure. Both of us.”

“I already know I’m sure.”

“You just think you are.”

“Santa Monica is so far away from here.”

She smiled and then laughed and shook her head.

“Then you’re just going to have to sleep over when you come visit.”

He nodded again and they embraced for a long moment.

“You can make me forget a lot of things, you know that?” he whispered into her ear.

“You, too,” she said back.

While they made love the phone rang, but whoever was calling did not leave a message when the machine picked up. Later, after Bosch got out of the shower, Eleanor reported that another call had come in but no message was left.

Finally, while Eleanor was boiling water for the pasta, the phone rang a third time and Bosch got it before the machine picked up.

“Hey, Bosch?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Roy Lindell. Remember me, Luke Goshen?”

“I remember. Was that you who called a couple times before?”

“Yeah, why didn’t you pick up?”

“I was busy. What do you need?”

“So, it was the bitch, huh?”

“What?”

“Tony’s wife.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know this guy Powers?”

“Not really. Just to see around.”

Bosch didn’t want to tell him anything he didn’t already know.

Lindell exhaled in a bored way loudly into the phone.

“Yeah, well, Tony once told me that he was more afraid of his wife than he was of Joey Marks.”

“Yeah?” Bosch said, suddenly interested. “He said that? When?”

“I don’t know. One night we were talking in the club and he just said it. I remember the place was closed. He was waiting for Layla and we were talking.”

“Lindell, thanks a lot for telling me this. What else did he say?”

“Hey, I’m telling you now, Bosch. Anyway, I couldn’t before. I was in character, man, and in that character you don’t tell the cops shit. And then after, I…well, then I thought you were trying to fuck me over. I wasn’t going to tell you shit then, either.”

“And now you know better.”

“Yeah, right. Look, Bosch, most guys you would’ve never heard from. But I’m calling. You think you’ll hear from anybody else from the bureau saying maybe we made a mistake about you? No way. But I like your style. I mean, you get pulled off the case and what do you do, you turn around and get right back on it. Then you solve the fucker. That takes balls and style, Bosch. I can dig that.”

“You can dig it. That’s great, Roy. What else did Tony Aliso tell you about his wife?”

“Nothing much. He just said she was cold. He said that she had him by the short hairs. Hooked and snooked and that was that. He couldn’t get a divorce from her without losing half his wad and then having her running around out there with all that she knew about his business and his business associates. If you know what I mean.”

“Why didn’t he just go to Joey Marks and ask for a whack on her?”

“I think on account that she knew Joey from way back and he liked her. It was Joey who introduced her to Tony way back when. I think Tony knew that if he went to Joey, it would get KO’d pretty quick and it might get back to her. And if he went to somebody else, he’d have to answer to Joey. Joey had the final say on that kind of stuff, and he wouldn’t want Tony getting involved in a freelance job like that and possibly endangering the wash operation.”

“How well do you think she knew Joey Marks? You think she could’ve gone back to him now?”

“No way. She killed the golden goose. Tony made Joey legitimate money. His first allegiance is always to the money.”

Bosch was quiet for a few moments and so was Lindell.

“So what happens with you now?” Bosch finally said.

“You mean with my thing? I go back to Vegas tonight. I sit down in front of the grand jury in the morning. I figure I’ll be talking to them at least a couple weeks. I’ve got a pretty good story to tell ’em. We should have Joey and his crew tagged and bagged by Christmas.”

“Hope you’re bringing your bodyguards.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m not alone.”

“Well, good luck, Lindell. All the bullshit aside, I like your style, too. Let me ask you something, why’d you tell me about the safe house and the Samoans? That wasn’t in keeping with your character.”

“I had to, Bosch. You scared me.”

“You thought I’d actually clip you for them?”

“I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t really worry me. I had people watching over me that you didn’t know about. But I was sure that they’d clip her. And I’m an agent, man. It was my duty to try to stop that. So I told you. I was surprised you didn’t guess I was undercover right then.”

“Never crossed my mind. You were good.”

“Well, I fooled the people I had to fool. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”

“Sure. Oh, Lindell?”

“Yeah.”

“Did Joey Marks ever think that Tony A. was skimming off him?”

Lindell laughed.

“You don’t give up, do you, Bosch?”

“I guess not.”

“Well, that information would be part of the investigation and I can’t talk about it. Officially.”

“What about unofficially?”

“Unofficially you didn’t hear it from me and I never talked to you. But to answer your question, Joey Marks thought everybody was skimming off him. He trusted no one. Every time I wore a wire with the guy, I was sweating bullets. Because you never knew when he was going to put his hand down your chest. I was with him more than a year and he was still doin’ that every now and then. I had to wear the bug in my armpit, man. You try pulling tape out of your armpit sometime, man. It hurts.”

“What about Tony?”

“That’s what I’m getting at. Sure, Joey thought Tony was skimming. He thought I was, too. And you gotta understand, a certain amount of that was permissible. Joey knew everybody had to make a buck to be happy. But he mighta felt Tony was taking more than his share. He never told me that’s what he thought, but I know he had the boy followed a couple times over here in L.A. And he got to somebody in Tony’s bank in Beverly Hills. Joey was being copied on the monthly statements.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He would’ve known if there were any deposits that were outta line.”

Bosch thought a moment but couldn’t think what else to ask.

“Why’d you ask that, Bosch?”

“Oh, I don’t know, something I’m workin’ out. Powers said the wife told him Tony had a couple million he skimmed. It’s hidden somewhere.”

Lindell whistled over the line.

“Seems like a lot to me. Seems like Joey would’ve caught that and put the hammer down on Tony pronto. That’s not what you call permissible.”

“Well, I think it accrued over the years, you know. He could have piecemealed it. Also, he was washing money for some of Joey’s friends in Chicago and Arizona, remember? He could’ve skimmed them, too.”

“Anything’s possible. Listen, Bosch, let me know how it all shakes out. I have to catch a plane.”

“One more thing.”

“Bosch, I gotta get to Burbank.”

“You ever heard of anybody in Vegas named John Galvin?”

Galvin was the name of the man who had last visited Veronica Aliso on the night she disappeared. There was a beat of silence before Lindell finally said the name was not familiar. But that silence was what Bosch really heard.

“You sure?”

“Look, I never heard of the guy, okay? I gotta go.”

After hanging up, Bosch opened his briefcase on the dining room table and took out a notebook so he could write down a few notes about what Lindell had said. Eleanor came out of the kitchen with utensils and napkins in her hands.

“Who was that?”

“Lindell.”

“Who?”

“The agent who was Luke Goshen.”

“What did he want?”

“I guess to apologize.”

“That’s unusual. The bureau usually doesn’t apologize for anything.”

“It wasn’t an official call.”

“Oh. Just one of those macho male bonding calls.”

Bosch smiled because she was so right.

“What’s this?” she asked as she put the silverware down and took the tape of Casualty of Desire out of his briefcase. “Oh, was this one of Tony Aliso’s movies?”

“Yeah. Part of his Hollywood legacy. It’s one of the ones Veronica was in. I was supposed to give it back to Kiz.”

“You already saw it?”

Bosch nodded.

“I would’ve liked to see it. Did you like it?”

“It was pretty bad, but we can put it on tonight if you want.”

“You sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“I’m sure.”

During dinner Bosch updated her in detail about the case. Eleanor asked few questions and eventually they lapsed into a comfortable quiet. The Bolognese sauce and linguini Eleanor had made was fantastic and Bosch broke the silence to tell her so. She had opened a bottle of red wine and that tasted good, too. He told her about that as well.

Afterward, they left the dishes in the sink and went out to the living room to watch the movie. Bosch sat with his arm on the back of the couch, his hand lightly touching Eleanor’s neck. He found it boring to watch the film again and his mind quickly drifted away as he thought over the day’s events. The money was what held his attention the longest. He wondered if Veronica already had it in her possession or if it was in a place where she had to go to get it. Not a local bank, he decided. They had already checked the local bank accounts.

That left Las Vegas, he concluded. Tony Aliso’s travel records showed that in the last ten months he had not been anywhere but Los Angeles and Las Vegas. If he had been operating a skim fund, he’d have to have had access to it. If the money wasn’t here, then it was over there. And since Veronica had not left the house before today, Bosch also concluded that she didn’t have the money yet.

The phone rang and interrupted these thoughts. Bosch climbed up from the couch and answered the phone in the kitchen so he wouldn’t disturb Eleanor’s viewing of the movie. It was Hank Meyer calling from the Mirage but it didn’t sound like Hank Meyer. It sounded like a scared boy.

“Detective Bosch, can I trust you?”

“Sure you can, Hank, what’s the matter?”

“Something’s happened. I mean, something’s come up. Uh, because of you I know something I don’t think I should know. I wish this whole thing…I don’t know what to-”

“Hold on, hold on, Hank. Just calm down and tell what it is that’s wrong. Be calm. Talk to me and we’ll fix it. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”

“I’m at the office. They called me at home because I had a flag on the computer for that betting slip that belonged to your victim.”

“Right.”

“Well, somebody cashed it tonight.”

“Okay, somebody cashed it. Who was it?”

“Well, you see, I put an IRS flag on the computer. Meaning that the cashier was supposed to request a driver’s license and get a Social Security number, you know, for tax purposes. Even though this ticket was worth only four thousand I put the flag on it.”

“Okay, so who cashed the slip?”

“A man named John Galvin. He had a local address.”

Bosch leaned over the counter and pressed the phone tightly to his ear.

“When did this happen?” he asked.

“At eight-thirty tonight. Less than two hours ago.”

“I don’t understand, Hank. Why is this upsetting to you?”

“Well, I left instructions on the computer for me to be contacted at home as soon as this slip was cashed. I was contacted. I came in and got the information on who cashed the slip so I could get it to you ASAP and then I went directly to the video room. I wanted to see this John Galvin, you know, if we got a clear picture of him.”

He stopped there. It was like pulling teeth getting the story out of him.

“And?” Bosch said. “Who was it, Hank?”

“We got a clear picture. It turns out I know John Galvin but not as John Galvin. Uh, as you know, one of my duties is to interface with law enforcement, maintain relations and help when I can whenever there-.”

“Yes, Hank, I know. Who was it?”

“I looked at the video. It was very clear. John Galvin is a man I know. He’s in Metro, a captain. His name is-”

“John Felton.”

“How’d-”

“Because I know him, too. Now listen to me, Hank. You didn’t tell me this, okay? We never talked. It’s best that way. Safest for you. Understand?”

“Yes, but…but what is going to happen?”

“You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of it and no one at Metro will ever know about this. Okay?”

“Okay, I guess. I-”

“Hank, I’ve got to go. Thanks, and I owe you a favor.”

Bosch hung up and called information for the number of Southwest Airlines at the airport in Burbank. He knew Southwest and America West handled most of the flights to Las Vegas and they both flew out of the same terminal. He called Southwest and had them page Roy Lindell. While he waited, he looked at his watch. It had been more than an hour since he had talked to Lindell, but he didn’t think the agent was in as much of a hurry as he had intimated on the phone. Bosch thought he had just said that to get off the phone.

A voice came on the line and asked who he was holding for. After Bosch repeated Lindell’s name, he was told to hold and after two clicks Lindell’s voice was on the line.

“Yeah, this is Roy, who’s this?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Who is this?”

“John Galvin is John Felton and you knew it all the time.”

“Bosch? Bosch, what are you doing?”

“Felton is Joey’s man in Metro. You knew that from being on the inside. And when Felton does things for Marks, he uses the name John Galvin. You knew that, too.”

“Bosch, I can’t talk about this. It’s all part of our in-”

“I don’t give a shit about your investigation. You have to figure out whose side you’re on, man. Felton has got Veronica Aliso. And that means Joey Marks has got her.”

“What are you talking about? This is crazy.”

“They know about the skim, don’t you see? Joey wants his money back and they’re going to squeeze it out of her.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“Because I know.”

Bosch thought of something and looked out through the kitchen door to the living room. Eleanor was still watching the movie and she looked over at him and raised her eyebrows in a question. Bosch shook his head to show his dissatisfaction with the person on the other end.

“I’m going to Vegas, Lindell. And I think I know where they’ll be. You want to get your people involved? I sure as hell can’t call Metro on this.”

“How are you so sure she’s even there?”

“Because she sent up a distress signal. Are you in or out?”

“We’re in, Bosch. Let me give you a number. You call it when you get over there.”

After Bosch hung up, he went into the living room. Eleanor had already turned off the tape.

“I can’t watch any more of that. It’s terrible. What’s going on?”

“That time you followed Tony Aliso around in Vegas, you said he went to a bank with the girlfriend, right?”

“Right.”

“Which bank? Where?”

“I, uh…it was on Flamingo, east of the Strip, east of Paradise Road. I can’t remember the name. I think it was Silver State National. Yes, that’s it. Silver State.”

“The Silver State on Flamingo, are you sure now?”

“Right, yes.”

“And it looked like she was opening an account?”

“Yes, but I can’t be sure. That’s the problem with a one-man tail. It’s a small branch bank and I couldn’t hang around inside too long. It looked like she was signing account papers and Tony was just watching. But I had to go out and wait outside until they were done. Remember, Tony knew me. If he even saw me, the tail would be blown.”

“Okay, I’m going.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight. I have to make some calls first.”

Bosch went back into the kitchen and called Grace Billets. While filling her in on what he had learned and his hunch about what it all meant, he got a pot of coffee going. After getting her approval to travel, he next called Edgar and then Rider and made arrangements to pick them up at the station in one hour.

He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter in deep thought. Felton. There was a contradiction, it seemed to Bosch. If the Metro captain was the Joey Marks organization’s inside man, why had he moved so quickly to go after Goshen when he got the match on the fingerprints Bosch had provided? Bosch played with this for a while and finally decided that Felton must have seen an opportunity in moving Goshen out of the way. He must have believed that his position in the Las Vegas underworld would rise if Goshen were out of the picture. Perhaps he even planned to arrange Goshen’s assassination, thereby ensuring the indebtedness of Joey Marks. Bosch realized that for this plan to work, Felton either didn’t know that Goshen knew he was the organization’s inside man, or he planned to get rid of Goshen before he got a chance to tell anyone.

Bosch took a sip of the scalding coffee and put these thoughts aside. He went back into the living room. Eleanor was still on the couch.

“Are you going?”

“Yeah. I’ve got to pick up Jerry and Kiz.”

“Why tonight?”

“Got to be there before the bank opens tomorrow.”

“You think Veronica is going to be there?”

“It’s a hunch. I think Joey Marks finally figured out just like we did that if he didn’t whack Tony, then somebody else did and that person had to have been close to him. And that that person now has his money. He knew Veronica from way back and would figure she was up to it. I think he sent Felton over to check into it and to get his money back and take care of her if she was dirty on it. But she must’ve talked him out of it somehow. Probably by mentioning she had two million in skim in a safe deposit box in Vegas. I think that’s what stopped Felton from killing her and instead made him take her with him. She’s probably only alive until they get into that box. I think she gave Felton her husband’s last betting slip because she knew he might cash it and we’d be watching for it.”

“What makes you think it’s at the bank where I saw him go?”

“Because we know about everything he had over here, all his accounts. It’s not over here. Powers told me Veronica had told him that Tony dropped the skim into a safe deposit box that she wouldn’t have access to until he was dead. She wasn’t a signatory on it. So my guess is that it’s in Vegas. It’s the only place he’s been outside of L.A. for the last year. And that if one day he was taking his girlfriend to open a bank account somewhere, he’d just go ahead and take her to the same bank he used.”

Eleanor nodded.

“It’s funny,” Bosch said.

“What is?”

“That what all of this really came down to was a bank caper. It’s not really about Tony Aliso’s murder, it’s about the money he skimmed and hid. A bank caper with his murder sort of a side effect. And that’s how you and I met. On a bank job.”

She nodded, her eyes going far off as she thought about it. Bosch immediately wished he hadn’t brought the memory up.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess it’s not really that funny.”

Eleanor looked up at him from the couch.

“Harry, I’m going with you to Las Vegas.”