He didn’t finish but Bosch knew what he was getting at. He decided to change the subject.
“The old man show up?”
“Jack Kincaid? No, we sent people to him. I hear he is not taking it well. He’s calling every politician he ever gave money to. I guess he thinks maybe the city council or the mayor will be able to bring his son back.”
“He knew what his son was. Probably knew all the time. That’s why he’s making the calls. He doesn’t want that to come out.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. We’ve already found digital video cameras and editing equipment. We’ll tie him to Charlotte’s Web. I feel confident of that.”
“It won’t matter. Where’s Chief Irving?”
“On the way.”
Bosch nodded. He stepped close to the couch and bent over, his hands on his knees, to look closely at the dead car czar. His eyes were open and his jaw was set in a final grimace. Lindell had been right when he’d said it had not been an easy ride down. He thought of Kincaid’s expression in comparison to his wife’s death look. There was no comparison.
“How do you think it went down?” he asked. “How’d she get the two of them?”
He continued to stare at the body while Lindell spoke.
“Well, you shoot a man in the balls and he’s going to be pretty docile. From the blood on them, I’d say that was where they got it first. Once she got past that point, I think she had pretty good control of the situation.”
Bosch nodded.
“Richter wasn’t armed?”
“Nope.”
“Anybody find a nine-millimeter around here yet?”
“No, not yet.”
Lindell gave Bosch another we fucked up look.
“We need that nine,” Bosch said. “Mrs. Kincaid got them to admit what they did with the girl but they didn’t say anything about Elias. We need to find that nine to tie them in and end this thing.”
“Well, we’re looking. If anybody finds the nine, we’ll be the first to know.”
“You have people on Richter’s home, office and car? I’m still putting my money on him being the shooter.”
“Yeah, we’re on it but don’t count on anything there.”
Bosch tried to read the FBI agent but couldn’t. He knew that something was not being said.
“What?”
“Edgar pulled his file from the police academy this morning.”
“Right. He was a washout way back. How come?”
“Turned out the guy was blind in one eye. The left eye. He was trying to make it through with nobody noticing. He did all right until the weapons course. He couldn’t shoot for shit on the range. That’s how they found out. Then they washed him out.”
Bosch nodded. He thought of the expert shooting that had taken place on Angels Flight and he knew this new information on Richter changed things. He knew it was unlikely Richter could have been the shooter.
His thoughts were disrupted by the muted roar of a helicopter. He looked up at the windows and saw a helicopter from Channel 4 drifting down and hovering outside the house, about fifty yards away. Through the rain Bosch could barely make out the cameraman in the open sliding door.
“Fucking vultures,” Lindell said. “You’d think the rain would keep them inside.”
He stepped back to the doorway where there was a panel of light switches and other electronic controls. He pushed a round button and kept his finger on it. Bosch heard the whine of an electric motor and watched an automatic window shade drop down over the windows.
“They can’t get near this place on the ground,” Bosch said. “Because of the gates. So the air’s their only shot.”
“I don’t care. Let’s see what they get now.”
Bosch didn’t care either. He looked back down at the bodies. Judging by the coloring and the slight odor already apparent in the room, he guessed that the two men had been dead for several hours. He wondered if this meant that Kate Kincaid had been in the house all that time with the bodies or had gone to Brentwood and spent the night in her daughter’s bed. He guessed the latter.
“Anybody come up with a TOD?” he asked.
“Yeah. Coroner puts time of death at sometime last night, anywhere from nine to midnight. He said the blood flow indicates they could have been alive as long as a couple hours from first to last bullet. It looks like she wanted some information from them but they didn’t want to give it up—at first.”
“Her husband talked. I don’t know about Richter—she probably didn’t care about him. But her husband told her everything about Stacey. Then, I guess, she finished him. Finished them both. It wasn’t her husband with the girl on the site images. You should get the coroner to take torso photos of Richter and do a comparison. It might have been him.”
Lindell gestured toward the bodies.
“Will do. So what do you think? She did this last night and then what, went up to bed?”
“Probably not. I think she spent the night in the Brentwood house. It looked to me like the girl’s bed had been slept in. She had to see me and tell the story before she could finish her plan.”
“The finish being her suicide.”
“Right.”
“That’s hard-core, man.”
“Living with her daughter’s ghost, what she let happen to her, that was even more hard-core. Suicide was the easy way out.”
“Not if you ask me. Like I keep thinking about Sheehan, man, and wondering. I mean, how dark out could it have been for him to do that?”
“Just hope you never know. Where are my people?”
“Down the hall in the office. They’re handling that.”
“I’ll be in there.”
Bosch left Lindell then and went down the hall to the office. Edgar and Rider were silently conducting a search. The items they wished to seize were being piled on top of the desk. Bosch nodded his hello and they did the same. A quiet pallor hung over the investigation now. There would be no prosecution, no trial. It would be left to them to explain what had happened. And they all knew the media would be skeptical and the public might not believe them.
Bosch approached the desk. There was a lot of computer equipment with connecting wires. There were boxes of thick disks used for data storage. There was a small video camera and an editing station.
“We’ve got a lot, Harry,” Rider said. “We would have had Kincaid cold on the pedo net. He’s got a Zip drive with all the images from the secret web site on it. He’s got this camera—we think it’s what was used to take the videos of Stacey.”
Rider, who was wearing gloves, lifted the camera up to show him.
“It’s digital. You take your movie, plug the camera into this dock here and download what you want. Then you upload it on your computer and put it out on the pedo net. All from the privacy of your home. It’s literally as easy as —”
She didn’t finish. Bosch turned to see what the distraction was and saw Deputy Chief Irving standing in the doorway of the room. Behind him stood Lindell and Irving’s adjutant, Lieutenant Tulin. Irving moved into the office and handed his wet raincoat to Tulin. He told him to take it and to wait in another room of the house.
“Which room, Chief?”
“Any room.”
Irivng closed the door after Tulin left. That left him, Lindell and Bosch’s team in the office. Bosch had an idea what was coming. The fixer was here now. The investigation was about to go through the spin cycle where decisions and public pronouncements would be made based on what best served the department, not the truth. Bosch folded his arms and waited.
“I want to finish this up now,” Irving said. “Take what you have found and clear out.”
“Chief,” Rider said, “we still have a lot of the house to cover.”
“I do not care. I want the bodies removed and then I want the police removed.”
“Sir,” she persisted, “we still haven’t found the weapon. We need that weapon to —”
“And you are not going to find it.”
Irving stepped further into the room. He looked around and when his eyes finally came to Bosch’s face they stopped.
“I made a mistake listening to you. I hope the city does not have to pay for it.”
Bosch paused a moment before responding. Irving never took his eyes off him.
“Chief, I know that you are thinking in . . . political terms about this. But we have to continue our searches of this house and other locations related to the Kincaids. We need to find the weapon in order to prove that —”
“I just told you, you are not going to find the weapon. Not here or anywhere else related to the Kincaids. All this was, Detective, was a diversion. A diversion that caused three deaths.”
Bosch didn’t know what was going on but he felt defensive. He gestured toward the equipment on the desk.
“I wouldn’t call this a diversion. Kincaid was involved in a major pedophile ring and we —”
“Your assignment was Angels Flight. I obviously gave you people too much latitude and now here we are.”
“This is Angels Flight. That’s why we need the weapon. It will tie it all —”
“Damn it, man, we have the weapon! We have had it for twenty-four hours! We had the killer as well. HAD! We let him go and now we will never get him back.”
Bosch could only stare at him. Irving’s face had turned the deep red of anger.
“The ballistics analysis was completed less than an hour ago,” Irving said. “The three slugs taken from the body of Howard Elias were matched unequivocally to bullets test-fired in the firearms lab from Detective Francis Sheehan’s nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson pistol. Detective Sheehan killed those people on that train. End of story. There are those of us who believed in that possibility but were talked out of it. The possibility is now fact but Detective Sheehan is long gone.”
Bosch was speechless and had to work hard to keep his jaw from dropping open.
“You,” he managed to say. “You’re doing this for the old man. For Kincaid. You are —”
Rider grabbed Bosch by the arm to try to stop him from committing career suicide. He shrugged off her grip and pointed in the direction of the living room where the bodies were.
“— selling out one of your own to protect that. How can you do that? How can you make that kind of a deal with them? And with yourself?”
“You are WRONG!” Irving yelled back at him. Then, quietly, he said, “You are wrong and I could crush you for saying what you just said.”
Bosch said nothing. He continued to hold the deputy chief’s stare.
“This city expects justice for Howard Elias,” Irving said. “And for the woman killed with him. You took that away, Detective Bosch. You allowed Sheehan a coward’s way out. You took justice away from the people and they are not going to be happy about that. Heaven help us all for that.”
33
The plan was to hold the press conference quickly, while the rain was still falling and could be used as a tool to keep people—angry people—off the streets. The entire investigative team was assembled and lined along the wall at the rear of the stage. The chief of police and the FBI’s Gilbert Spencer were to lead the briefing and answer all questions. This was standard operating procedure in highly sensitive situations. The chief and Spencer knew little more than what was on the press release. Therefore, questions about the details of the investigation could be easily and honestly deflected with the I am not aware of that or Not to my knowledge sort of answer.
O’Rourke, from media relations, did the warm-up, telling the mob of reporters to act responsibly and that the briefing would be short, with further information furnished in the days to come. He then introduced the chief of police, who took a spot behind the microphones and read from a carefully prepared statement.
“During my short tenure as chief of police I have had the responsibility of presiding over the funeral of police officers who have fallen in the line of duty. I have held the hands of mothers who have lost their children to the senseless violence of this city. But my heart has never been heavier than right now. I have to announce to the people of this great city that we know who killed Howard Elias and Catalina Perez. And it is with deep, deep regret that I report that it was a member of this department. Earlier today ballistics tests and analysis matched the bullets that killed Howard Elias and Catalina Perez to the service weapon used by Detective Francis Sheehan of the Robbery-Homicide Division.”
Bosch looked out across the sea of reporters’ faces and saw shock on many of them. The news gave even them pause, for they knew the consequences. The news was the match, they the gasoline. The rain probably wouldn’t be enough to put out this fire.
A couple of reporters, probably wire service men, pushed through the standing-room-only crowd and went out the door to be the first to spread the word. The police chief pressed on.
“As many of you know, Sheehan was one of several officers being sued by Howard Elias on behalf of Michael Harris. The investigators on this case believe Sheehan became overwrought with emotions relating to this case and the dissolution of his marriage in recent months. He may have become unbalanced. We may never know because Detective Sheehan took his own life last night, as he understood that it was only a matter of time before he was revealed as the killer. As a police chief, you hope never to have to make a statement such as this. But this department hides nothing from its citizens. The bad must be aired so that we can fully celebrate the good. I know the eight thousand good people of this department join me in apologizing to the families of these two victims as well as to every citizen in this city. And we ask that the good citizens in return react responsibly and calmly to this truly horrible turn of events. Now, I have other announcements but if there are questions relating specifically to this investigation I can take a few at this time.”
Immediately there was a chorus of unintelligible shouts and the chief simply pointed to one of the reporters in the front center. Bosch didn’t recognize him.
“How and where did Sheehan kill himself?”
“He was at a friend’s home last night. He shot himself. His service weapon had been confiscated for the ballistics exam. He used another weapon, the source of which is still under investigation. It was the investigators’ belief that he did not have a weapon at his disposal. They obviously were wrong.”
The cacophony began again but it was coming in behind the booming voice of Harvey Button. His question was clear and it had to be answered.
“Why was this man free? He was a suspect yesterday. Why was he released?”
The chief looked at Button for a long moment before answering.
“You just answered that yourself. He was a suspect. He was not under arrest. We were awaiting the results of the ballistics examination and there was no reason to hold him at that time. At that time there was no evidence with which to charge him. We got that evidence with the ballistics report. Of course, we got it too late.”
“Chief, we all know that the police can hold suspects up to forty-eight hours before charging them. Why wasn’t Detective Sheehan held in custody?”
“Frankly, because we were pursuing other avenues of investigation. He was not a full-fledged suspect. He was one of several people we were looking at. We felt there was no reason to hold him. He had satisfactorily answered our questions, he was a member of this department and we did not believe he was going anywhere. We also didn’t believe he was suicidal.”
“A follow-up,” Button yelled above the ensuing din. “Are you saying that his status as a police officer got him the privilege of being released so that he could go home and kill himself?”
“No, Mr. Button, that is not what I am saying. I am saying we didn’t know for sure it was him until it was too late. We knew today. He was released and he killed himself last night.”
“If he had been a regular citizen—say, a black man like Michael Harris—would he have been allowed to go home last night?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a re
sponse.”
The chief held his hands up to fend off the shouts of other reporters.
“I have other announcements here.”
The reporters continued to shout out questions and O’Rourke stepped forward and shouted louder, threatening to end the news conference and clear the room if there was not quiet. It did the trick. The chief took it from there.
“This announcement is indirectly related to the events I just mentioned. I have the grim duty of also announcing the deaths of Sam Kincaid, Kate Kincaid and Donald Charles Richter, a security specialist who worked for the Kincaids.”
He went on to read from another sheet of paper that described the double murder and suicide, couching the events as the actions of a distraught Kate Kincaid who had let mounting grief over the loss of her daughter get the better of her. No mention was made of her husband’s defilement of that daughter or his ongoing pedophilia or involvement in a secret web site dedicated to that perversion. There was also no mention of the ongoing investigation of that site by the bureau and the department’s computer fraud team.
Bosch knew it was the old man at work. The original car czar at work, pulling strings to save his family name. Bosch guessed that markers were being called in all over the city. Jackson Kincaid would not allow his son’s reputation to be destroyed—along with his own. It might cost him too much business.
When the chief had finished reading from the page there was a smattering of questions.
“If she was distraught, why did she kill her husband?” asked Keisha Russell of the Times.
“We’ll never know that.”
“And what about the security man, Richter? Why would she kill him if it was about her daughter?”
“Again we’re not sure. We are looking into the possibility that he happened to be in the house or happened by when Mrs. Kincaid took out the gun and announced the intention of killing herself. There is a strong possibility that both of the men were killed while trying to prevent Mrs. Kincaid from doing that. She then left the house and went to their previous home, where the couple had lived with their daughter. She killed herself in the bed where her daughter had slept. It is a very sad situation and our hearts go out to the family and friends of the Kincaids.”