“Where exactly is Sister Esther?” Bosch asked.
“She is on a mission to Estado de Guerrero, Mexico. She went to the village of Ayutla and we have heard reports that vigilantes and narcos are fighting there. We have not heard from her in over a week now.”
“Why did she go there?”
“We all have missions, Detective. We bring books and medical supplies and we bring the word of God to children. It is our calling.”
“When was Sister Esther supposed to check in or be back? Is she overdue?”
“No, she is not overdue. She doesn’t return for another two weeks, in fact. But we make weekly contact with home base when we can. This is home base, Detective. It has been ten days since we heard from her.”
Bosch nodded. Sister G made the sign of the cross as she sent a quick prayer up for Sister Esther.
“Were you here when Sister Esther came to the convent twenty years ago?” Soto asked.
“Yes,” Sister G said. “I believe I am the only one of us here now who was in the convent then. Many of us have gone to the Lord.”
“Do you remember the circumstances of her coming here?” Soto asked.
“It was a long time ago,” the nun responded. “I do remember she was from Los Angeles—I remember because it was as though we had received an angel from the City of Angels.”
“How so?” Bosch asked.
“Well, we were in dire need at the time,” Sister G said. “We had a mortgage then and it was well overdue. We were faced with losing this wonderful place we call home base, and then she arrived. She paid off the whole mortgage. And she said she wanted to join us. We took her under our wing and led her to the vows.”
Bosch nodded.
“Would you like to see Sister Esther’s work?” Sister G asked.
“How do you mean?” Bosch asked.
She pointed to the old television to her right.
“We keep video records of our missions,” she said. “It helps with fund-raising. I believe we have Sister Esther’s last mission in the DVD player. She went to a school in Chiapas. Have you heard of the cinturones de miseria?”
Bosch looked at Soto for a translation.
“The barrio,” she said. “The slums.”
“Chiapas has the most extreme poverty in all of Mexico,” Sister G said.
The nun took a remote control off the table next to her chair and turned on the television and DVD player. Soon the screen was depicting a scene in a school where two nuns in all-white habits were serving food to children in a threadbare classroom. The children had dirty clothes and many had swollen bellies. Bosch didn’t have to ask which nun was Sister Esther. He recognized her from photographs of Ana Acevedo.
Sister G fast-forwarded the DVD and stopped it at a point where the nuns were conducting a class. Sister Esther was reading from a Bible with an ornate gold design on its leather cover. The children, who ranged in age from about six to early teens, listened with rapt attention.
Sister G jumped the video again and stopped it at a scene in which the two nuns were leaving the village where there appeared to be no paved roads and no power poles. They were about to board a colorful but old bus. Over the windshield of the bus the destination read “Cristobal de las Casas.” Bosch had never heard of the place.
A young boy of about eight didn’t want Sister Esther to leave. He was clinging to her white habit and crying. She was softly caressing the back of his head, trying to calm him.
Sister G turned the television off.
“That is Sister Esther,” she said.
“Thank you for showing us,” Bosch said.
He wondered if Sister G had a sense of why they had really come to see Sister Esther and had shown them the video to earn sympathy for her. Soto was about to say or ask something but Bosch put his hand on her arm to stop her. They had what they needed for now. He was concerned that too many more questions would create suspicion—if they hadn’t already—and word might get back to Sister Esther. He didn’t want to spook her before he got the chance to talk to her himself.
“Well, Sister,” he said, “if you don’t mind, we’re going to check with you at a later point after Sister Esther makes it back okay. When she does, we’ll come back to speak to her. We’re sorry for this intrusion and thank you for your time.”
He started to get up.
“Can you tell me what this is all about?” Sister G asked.
“Sure,” Bosch said pleasantly. “I don’t know if Sister Theresa mentioned it, but we work on a cold case squad and try to solve old cases, old crimes. Sister Esther—back when she was Ana Acevedo—was a witness to a crime and we are taking another look at it. We would like to talk to her and see if she remembers anything she might not have shared with police back then. You would be surprised by how much is imprinted on the memory and has the tendency to bubble up to the surface over time.”
The nun checked her watch and looked at Bosch suspiciously.
“I’m sure I would be,” she finally said. “If you want to leave a business card I will have Sister Esther call you as soon as she returns, the Lord willing.”
“You don’t have to bother, Sister,” Bosch said. “I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”
It was after 2 a.m. by the time Bosch came in the front door of his home. The lights were on but all was quiet. His daughter’s bedroom door was closed. She had gone to sleep long ago. He had spoken to her from the car during the drive up from Calexico.
Bosch was keyed up despite the long day, most of it spent in the car. He went out onto the back deck and stood against the railing, taking in the city and thinking about the strides made on the Bonnie Brae case. In the morning he would bring Captain Crowder up to date and then they would need to decide whether to go to Mexico in an attempt to find Ana Acevedo, aka Sister Esther Gonzalez, in the cartel-controlled mountains of Guerrero, or be content to await her return to American soil. Either way had its risks and Bosch would leave it to the captain to make the call.
He made a note to himself to attempt to find out in the morning if Ana Acevedo had legally changed her name to Sister Esther Gonzalez, and if so, why the transaction had not come up during Soto’s efforts to locate her. He assumed she traveled to Mexico on a valid passport. There should have been a record somewhere of the change.
His thoughts of Soto’s efforts seemed to conjure her. Bosch’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. Her name was on the screen.
“Lucy?”
“Harry, were you asleep?”
“No, not yet. Where are you?”
Bosch had dropped her off at her car inside the garage beneath the PAB.
“At the squad. I’d left my keys up here.”
He wasn’t sure she was telling the truth.
“And?”
“And I just checked on things before I was going to go home. I pulled up the story on the Merced case in La Opinión to see how it came out, you know?”
“Okay.”
“Everything was fine with the story. It got good play and I wasn’t misquoted. It said we recovered the murder weapon. So then I scrolled down to the comments. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Not really—I don’t really read newspapers, online or not. But go ahead.”
“Well, online, readers can make comments about any story on the website. So there were some comments, including one I am sure is from our anonymous caller. The woman. She won’t give up and I’m thinking we need to talk to her.”
“What did she say?”
“It was in Spanish but it basically says the police are liars. They know who did this because they’ve been told but it’s a big cover-up to protect the mayor and the real man in charge behind him.”
Bosch thought about it for a few moments.
“We still think she’s talking about Zeyas, right?”
“Right.”
“Who would be the man in charge? Broussard?”
“I guess.”
“And she didn’t put her
name on there, right?”
“No, you can type in any name or words you want. She typed in ‘Lo sé.’ I know.”
“Is that sort of thing traceable?”
“Probably with a court order. I doubt the paper will help us without it. I was just going to keep trying to call her, get her to answer. Then we set up a meet.”
“No, let’s not keep calling her. We spook her and she throws away the cell. She wants to be anonymous for a reason.”
“Then what?”
“We ping her.”
“Okay.”
“Go home now, Lucy. Get some sleep. We’ll set it up in the morning. I know a judge who will sign the order.”
“Okay, Harry.”
“And good work. It’s getting hard to keep up with you.”
“Thank you, Harry.”
Bosch clicked off the call. He wasn’t so sure he had said it as a compliment.
35
On Thursday morning Bosch finally beat Soto into the office, arriving before dawn with a coffee in hand from a twenty-four-hour Starbucks. He found the call-in tip sheets on her desk and immediately went to work preparing a search warrant application that would allow them to locate the cell phone used by the anonymous caller who had repeatedly complained of a cover-up in regard to the shooting of Orlando Merced.
The advent of the cellular phone had brought a sea change in law enforcement in the prior two decades. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 had been updated and expanded almost annually to accommodate the rapidly changing electronic landscape and the many ways it was exploited by criminals. The law required manufacturers and service carriers of telecommunication devices to include surveillance capabilities in all designs and systems. That was where pinging came into play. An unregistered or throwaway cell phone might appear to be the perfect tool for anonymous communications, whether legal or not, but the device could be traced and located by its constant connection with cell towers and the cellular network. With a court-approved search warrant, the LAPD’s tech unit would be able to send an electronic pulse to the phone—a process called “pinging”—and pinpoint its location to within fifty yards by longitude and latitude coordinates. The tech unit worked quickly. Once a ping order was in hand, the process would begin within two hours.
That was why Bosch had come in early. The plan was to have a warrant on Judge Sherma Barthlett’s desk before she got the chance to convene court for the day.
Bosch was not new to the process of pinging cell phones. It had become a useful tool in running down suspects in cold case murders. Often, finding the suspects was more difficult than identifying them after many years. The process started with a database where all cellular numbers were listed, along with the service provider behind them. Under the CALEA law, even the service providers on throwaway phones had to be listed. It took Bosch less than five minutes to ascertain the service provider on the number belonging to the anonymous caller. He then used a search warrant template to begin writing the warrant on his computer.
Once he had printed out the warrant, he was good to go. He first called the tech unit to alert the sergeant in charge that he would be coming in with a priority-level ping order later in the morning. Murder investigations always jumped to the front of the line, which was primarily stacked with orders relating to drug cases. The throwaway cell was the favored tool of drug dealers around the world.
The plan now was to swing by the nearby Starbucks for a cup of coffee and a pastry that he would take to the judge along with the warrant. Bosch wrote a note for Soto and put it on her desk, but he almost walked into her when he was going through the squad room door.
“Harry, you’re in early.”
“Yeah, I wanted to get the ping going. I left you a note. I’m going to see my judge and hopefully we’ll be in business before lunch.”
“Great.”
“We should think about what we’re going to tell the captain about Acevedo and Bonnie Brae. I figure we’ll go talk to him while the tech unit’s doing their thing with this.”
He held up the file containing the warrant he had just authored.
“Okay, sounds good.”
“You okay, Lucy?”
She looked tired and out of it, as if all the long hours of the past week and a half had finally caught up with her.
“Yeah, fine. I just need coffee.”
“I’m heading to Starbucks to get something to smooth my way in with the judge. You want to go?”
“No, I’m good. I’m just going to drop off my stuff and go downstairs.”
“The machine. You sure?”
“Yes, you go. Get that warrant.”
“Okay, I’ll be back.”
Bosch carried a latte and a straight coffee on a cardboard tray that locked the cups into place and guarded against spilling in the crowded courthouse elevator. He wasn’t sure how the judge took her coffee. He also had a slice of banana nut bread and a blueberry muffin in a bag. It would be judge’s choice.
Judge Barthlett was in Department 111, the courthouse adhering to its long tradition of referring to courtrooms as departments. The room was empty save for the judge’s clerk, who was in her pod to the right of the bench. She had her head down as she worked on the morning’s schedule and didn’t notice Bosch’s approach.
“Meme?” he said.
She almost jumped out of her chair.
“I’m sorry,” Bosch said quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was wondering if I could get in to see the judge real quick. I brought her a coffee or a latte.”
“Um, the judge drinks tea and brews her own,” Meme said.
“Oh.”
“But I’d take a latte.”
“Sure.”
Bosch pulled the cup out of its mooring and put it down on her desk.
“Think she’ll want a muffin or some banana nut bread?” he asked.
“She’s on a diet,” Meme said.
Bosch wordlessly put the bag down on the desk.
“Let me go ask if she can see you now,” Meme said.
“Thanks,” Bosch said.
An officer in the tech unit named Marshall Flowers was assigned to Bosch’s ping order. His job was to make contact with the service carrier for the phone in question and initiate the pinging. The Department was charged for this service and the tech unit had a budget. Subsequently the pinging of the cell phone was intermittent, usually twice an hour until it was determined if the phone was in motion and would have to be tracked on a shorter interval.
Flowers told Bosch that results could start coming in within a couple hours and that he should go back to his squad room and wait. When coordinates for the phone were determined, they would be e-mailed to him with a link to the location on Google Maps. Bosch had given his partner’s e-mail address as the contact since Soto was more adept at maneuvering on Google Maps than he. Besides, Bosch planned on being the wheelman when they started tracking the phone.
Bosch returned to the squad room, where Soto was at her desk. She told him that Captain Crowder wanted to see them as soon as he returned. When they got to the office, they found Lieutenant Samuels waiting with the captain.
“Okay, let’s hear it,” Samuels said. “You two have been all over the state the past couple days. What do you have to show for it?”
Samuels was Crowder’s dog and he had obviously been allowed off the leash. The fact that he opened the meeting made it clear that Crowder had deferred supervision of the Bosch/Soto team to the dog because he was tired of waiting on results.
On the way over to the office, Bosch and Soto had split responsibilities for the report. Soto would take Bonnie Brae and Bosch would handle the update on Merced.
Captain Crowder said he wanted to start with Bonnie Brae; it was, after all, the bigger case.
“I’ll take that,” Soto said. “Yesterday we think we identified an individual who was an accomplice on the EZBank robbery that occurred almost simultaneously to the fire. As you know from our last
update, we are working on a theory that the fire was started by the robbers as a diversion. We now just need to find her.”
“That’s what you were doing yesterday?” Samuels said. “Looking for her all over hell and back?”
“Part of the day, Lieutenant. But we determined she is out of the country and we’ll await her return.”
Neither Samuels nor Crowder responded and Bosch quickly jumped in.
“Unless, Captain, you want to authorize a trip to Acapulco. We think she’s down there somewhere in the state of Guerrero. Up in the mountains. We could fly into Acapulco and hire a guide and a Jeep.”
Bosch could tell by the captain’s face he wasn’t interested in flying a team of detectives to Acapulco, even if their final destination was the treacherous mountain region of Guerrero. Just the thought of putting it into a budget report that would be reviewed on the tenth floor was enough to make the sweat pop on his forehead.
“Is she scheduled to return soon?” Samuels asked.
“Within two weeks,” Soto said.
“Then I think we can wait,” Crowder said. “You two have plenty to do in the meantime. In fact, let’s move on to the Merced case. Where do we stand?”
Bosch took it from there.
“We’ve got a thing working today,” he said. “There’s somebody out there who we think has some information. She’s repeatedly called the tip line anonymously—or so she thought—and she left a blind comment on the story that ran yesterday in La Opinión. We got a ping order about an hour ago and we’re hopefully going to run that down today and talk to her face-to-face.”
“What do you think she knows?” Crowder asked.
“Well, she seems to think that the ex-mayor knows who’s behind the shooting and that there’s a cover-up,” Bosch said.
“You’re talking about Armando Zeyas?” Crowder asked. “She sounds like a loon. Don’t tell me this is coming down to you two chasing crazies.”
“She’s adamant about it,” Bosch said. “There’s enough there that we need to find this woman and talk to her. It’s probably a long shot but sometimes long shots pay off.”
“Probably a long shot?” Samuels said. “You’re telling us after more than a week on this case, all you’ve got is a long shot? Some crazy who’s probably just making a beef to try and collect some reward money? Who do you think you’re kidding, Bosch?”