Bosch was disgusted. He almost shook his head but knew that since he was standing against the wall behind the chief that such a gesture would be picked up by the cameras and reporters.
“Now, if there is nothing further, I would ask that —”
“Chief,” Button cut in. “Inspector General Carla Entrenkin has scheduled a press conference at Howard Elias’s office in an hour. Do you know what she is going to say and do you have any comment on it?”
“No. Inspector Entrenkin operates independently of this department. She does not answer to me and therefore I have no idea what she’ll be saying.”
But by the tone of the chief’s voice it was clear that he did not expect whatever Entrenkin was going to say to be positive for the department.
“I want to end now,” the chief said. “But before I do, I want to thank the FBI and particularly Special Agent Spencer for the help that was provided. If there is any solace to be found in all of this, it is that the citizens of this community can rest assured that this department is dedicated to weeding out the bad apples, no matter where they might be. This department is also willing to place and accept responsibility for its members’ action without cover-up, no matter what the cost to our pride and reputation. I hope the good citizens of Los Angeles will remember that and accept my sincerest apology. I hope the good citizens of Los Angeles will act calmly and responsibly in reaction to these announcements.”
His last words were drowned out by the scraping of chairs and equipment as the reporters began to get up en masse and move toward the exit doors. There was a story to get out and another press conference to go to.
“Detective Bosch.”
Bosch turned. Irving had come up close to him.
“Any problems with what was announced? Any problems for you or your team?”
Bosch studied the deputy chief’s face. The implication was clear. Make any waves and your boat will be the one that gets swamped and sinks—and you’d be taking others down with you. Go along to get along. The company motto. That’s what it should say on the side of the cop cars. Forget about To protect and serve.
Bosch slowly shook his head when what he wanted to do was put his hands around Irving’s throat.
“No, no problem at all,” he said through a tight jaw.
Irving nodded and instinctively knew it was time to step away.
Bosch saw the exit doors were now clear and headed that way, his head down. He felt that he didn’t know anything. His wife, his old friend, his city. Everybody and everything was strange to him. And in that feeling of aloneness he thought he began to understand what it was that Kate Kincaid and Frankie Sheehan were thinking about at the end of the line.
34
Bosch had gone home to watch it all on television. He had his portable typewriter on the coffee table and was leaning over it, typing out the final reports on the investigation with two fingers. He knew he could have given it to Rider to do on her laptop and it would be done in a tenth of the time, but Bosch wanted to write this case summary himself. He had decided to write it exactly the way it had happened—everything, not protecting anyone, the Kincaid family or even himself. He would turn the final package over to Irving and if the deputy chief wanted to rewrite it, edit it or even shred it, then it was up to him. Bosch felt that as long as he told it like it was and put it down on paper there was still a small degree of integrity in that.
He stopped typing and looked at the television when the broadcast broke away from the street reports of sporadic unrest and violence to recap the day’s events. There were several outtakes from the press conference—Bosch saw himself standing against the wall behind the police chief, his face giving the lie to everything that was being said. And then the report cut to Carla Entrenkin’s press conference in the lobby of the Bradbury. She announced her immediate resignation as inspector general. She said that after she had conferred with the widow of Howard Elias it was decided and agreed upon that she would take over the law practice of the slain attorney.
“I believe that it is in this new role that I can have the most positive effect on reforming this city’s police department and rooting out the bad seeds within,” she said. “Carrying on Howard Elias’s work will be an honor as well as a challenge.”
When questioned by the reporters about the Black Warrior case, Entrenkin said that she planned to continue the case with minimal delay. She would ask the presiding judge in the morning to reschedule the start of the trial for the following Monday. By then she would be up to speed on the intricacies of the case and the strategy Howard Elias had been planning to follow. When a reporter suggested that the city would likely go out of its way to settle the case, in light of the day’s developments, Entrenkin demurred.
“Like Howard, I don’t want to settle this,” she said, looking right at the camera. “This case deserves a full airing before the public. We will go to trial.”
Great, Bosch thought, as the report ended. It won’t rain forever. If a full-blown riot is avoided now, Carla I’mthinkin’ would be sure to deliver it the following week.
The broadcast switched to a report on reaction from community leaders to the day’s events and the announcements by the chief of police. When Bosch saw the Reverend Preston Tuggins appear on the screen he picked up the remote and switched channels. He caught reports on peaceful candlelight vigils on two other channels and Councilman Royal Sparks on a third before finally finding a broadcast that showed a helicopter shot from above the intersection of Florence and Normandie. The same spot where the 1992 riots flared was packed with a large crowd of protesters. The demonstration—if it could be called that—was peaceful but Bosch knew it was only a matter of time. The rain and the dimming light of the day were not going to hold back the anger. He thought about what Carla Entrenkin had said to him on Saturday night, about anger and violence filling the void left when hope is taken away. He thought about the void that was inside himself now and wondered what he would fill it with.
He turned the sound down and went back to his report. When he was done, he rolled it out of the typewriter and put it in a file folder. He would drop it off the next morning when he got the chance. With the end of the investigation, he and his partners had been assigned to twelve-and-twelve status like everybody else in the department. They were to report in uniform at six o’clock the next morning at the South Bureau command center. They’d be spending the next few days, at a minimum, on the streets, riding the war zone in two-car, eight-cop patrols.
Bosch decided to go to the closet to check out the condition of his uniform. He hadn’t worn it in five years—since the earthquake and the last use of the department’s emergency response plan. While he was taking it out of its plastic wrap the phone rang and Bosch hurried to answer it, hoping that it might be Eleanor checking in from someplace to say she was safe and okay. He grabbed the phone off the night table and sat down on the bed. But it wasn’t Eleanor. It was Carla Entrenkin.
“You have my files,” she said.
“What?”
“The files. The Black Warrior case. I’m taking the case. I need the files back.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, I just saw that on the TV.”
There was a silence then that made Bosch uncomfortable. There was something about the woman that Bosch liked, though he seemed to care so little for her cause.
“I guess that was a good move,” he finally said. “You taking his cases. You worked that out with the widow, huh?”
“I did. And no, I didn’t tell her about Howard and me. I didn’t see the need to spoil the memories she will have. She’s had it rough enough.”
“That was noble of you.”
“Detective . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing. I just don’t understand you sometimes.”
“Join the club.”
More silence.
“I have the files here. The whole box. I was just typing out my final report. I’ll pack it all up and try to drop it off tomorrow. But I
can’t be held to it—I’m on patrol until things calm down on the South Side.”
“That will be fine.”
“Are you taking over his office, too? Is that where I should bring everything?”
“Yes. That’s the plan. That would be fine.”
Bosch nodded but he knew she couldn’t see this.
“Well,” he said. “Thanks for your help. I don’t know if Irving has said anything, but the lead to Sheehan came out of the files. One of the old cases. I guess you heard about that.”
“Actually . . . no. But you’re welcome, Detective Bosch. I’m curious, though. About Sheehan. He was your former partner . . .”
“Yes. He was.”
“Does all of this seem plausible? That he would first kill Howard and then himself? That woman on the train, too?”
“If you asked me that yesterday I would have said never in a million years. But today I feel like I couldn’t read myself, let alone anybody else. We have a saying when we can’t explain things. The evidence is what it is . . . and we leave it at that.”
Bosch leaned back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He held the phone to his ear. After a long moment she spoke.
“But is it possible that there is another interpretation of the evidence?”
She said it slowly, concisely. She was a lawyer. She chose her words well.
“What are you saying, Inspector?”
“It’s just Carla now.”
“What are you saying, Carla? What are you asking me?”
“You have to understand, my role is different now. I am bound by attorney-client ethics. Michael Harris is now my client in a lawsuit against your employer and several of your colleagues. I have to be care —”
“Is there something that clears him? Sheehan? Something you held back before?”
Bosch sat up and now leaned forward. He was staring wide-eyed at nothing. He was all internal, trying to remember something he could have missed. He knew Entrenkin had held back the trial strategy file. There must have been something in there.
“I can’t answer your —”
“The strategy file,” Bosch cut in excitedly. “It was something in there that puts the lie to this. It . . .”
He stopped. What she was suggesting—or the suggestion he was reading in her words—did not make sense. Sheehan’s service weapon had been linked to the Angels Flight shootings. There was a ballistics match. Three bullets from the body of Howard Elias, three matches. End of argument, end of case. The evidence is what it is.
That was the hard fact he was up against, yet his gut instinct still told him Sheehan was all wrong for this, that he wouldn’t have done it. Yes, he would have gladly danced on Elias’s grave but he wouldn’t have put the lawyer in that grave. There was a big difference. And Bosch’s instincts—though abandoned in light of the facts—were that Frankie Sheehan, no matter what he had done to Michael Harris, was still too good a man at his core to have done the latter. He had killed before, but he was not a killer. Not like that.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what you know or think you know, but you’ve got to help me. I can’t —”
“It’s there,” she said. “If you have the files, it’s there. I held something back that I was bound to hold back. But part of it was in the public files. If you look, you’ll find it. I’m not saying your partner is clear. I’m just saying there was something else here that probably should have been looked at. It wasn’t.”
“And that’s all you are going to tell me?”
“That’s all I can tell you—and even that I shouldn’t have.”
Bosch was silent for a moment. He didn’t know whether to be angry with her for not telling him specifically what she knew or just happy that she had given him the clue and the direction.
“All right,” he finally said. “If it’s here I’ll find it.”
35
It took Bosch nearly two hours to make his way through the Black Warrior case files. Many of the folders he had opened previously, but some had been viewed by Edgar and Rider or left to others on the squad Irving had put together at Angels Flight less than seventy-two hours earlier. He looked at each file as if he had never seen it before, looking for the thing that had been missed—the telling detail, the boomerang that would change his interpretation of everything and send it in a new direction.
That was the problem with gang-banging a case—putting multiple investigative teams on it. No single pair of eyes saw all of the evidence, all of the leads or even all of the paperwork. Everything was split up. Though one detective was nominally in charge, it was rare that everything crossed his radar screen. Now Bosch had to make sure it did.
He found what he believed he was looking for—and what Carla Entrenkin had hinted at—in the subpoena file, the folder where receipts from the process server were stored. These receipts were received by Howard Elias’s office after the subject of the subpoena had been served with the summons to appear for a deposition or as a witness in court. The file was thick with the thin white forms. The stack was in chronological order of service. The first half of the stack consisted of subpoenas for depositions and these dated back several months. The second half of the stack consisted of witness subpoenas for the court case that had been scheduled to start that day. These were summonses to the cops being sued as well as other witnesses.
Bosch remembered that Edgar had looked through this file earlier—he had come across the subpoena for the car wash records. But that discovery must have distracted him from other things in the file. As Bosch looked through the subpoenas another filing caught his eye as being worthy of a second look. It was a subpoena for Detective John Chastain of the Internal Affairs Division. This was surprising because Chastain had never mentioned any involvement in the lawsuit. Chastain had headed the internal investigation of Michael Harris’s allegations that had cleared the RHD detectives of any wrongdoing, so the fact that he had been called wasn’t unusual. It would stand to reason that he would be called as a witness in defense of the detectives accused of wrongdoing by Michael Harris. But the fact that Chastain had not told anyone he was a subpoenaed witness for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit was. If that had been known he might have been disqualified from the team investigating the murders for the same reason that the RHD bulls had been removed. There was a clear conflict. The subpoena needed explanation. And Bosch’s interest in it increased further when he saw that the date of service was Thursday, the day before Elias’s murder. But curiosity turned to suspicion when Bosch saw the note handwritten by the process server at the bottom of the subpoena.
Det. Chastain refused acceptance at vehicle.
Server placed under wiper.
The note made it very clear that Chastain didn’t want any part of the case. And it turned Bosch’s attention into a sharp focus. The city could have been burning from Dodger Stadium to the beach and he probably wouldn’t have noticed the television now.
He realized as he stared at the subpoena that the subject—Chastain—had been given a specific date and time to appear in court to give testimony. He shuffled through the court subpoenas and realized that they were placed in the file in order of service, not in the order that those summoned would appear in trial. He knew then that by placing them in order according to the appearance dates and times, he would have the chronological order of Elias’s case and a better understanding of how he planned the trial.
It took him two minutes to put the subpoenas in the proper order. When he was done, he looked at the documents one by one, envisioning the process of the trial. First Michael Harris would testify. He would tell his story. Next would come Captain John Garwood, head of RHD. Garwood would testify about the investigation, giving the sanitized version. The next subpoena was for Chastain. He would follow Garwood. Reluctantly—he had tried to refuse service—he would follow the RHD captain.
Why?
Bosch put the question aside for the moment and began going through the other subpoenas. It became clear that
Elias was following an age-old strategy of alternating positive and negative witnesses. He was planning to alternate the testimony of the RHD men, the defendants, with witnesses who would obviously benefit Michael Harris. There was Harris, the doctor who treated his ear, Jenkins Pelfry, his boss at the car wash, the two homeless men who had found Stacey Kincaid’s body, and finally Kate Kincaid and Sam Kincaid. It was clear to Bosch that Elias was going to attack the RHD case, expose the torture of Michael Harris, and establish his defense of having done nothing wrong. He would then blow the RHD completely out of the water by bringing in Kate Kincaid to detail the car wash connection and the explanation for the fingerprints. Then most likely it would be Sam Kinkaid’s turn. Elias would use him to expose the Charlotte’s Web Site and the horror of Stacey Kincaid’s young life. It was clear that the case Elias was going to present to the jury followed the same line of investigation Bosch and his team had followed—that Harris was innocent, that there was an explanation for his fingerprints, and that Sam Kincaid or someone connected to him and the pedo net killed his stepdaughter.
Bosch knew it was a good strategy. He believed Elias would have won the case. He flipped back to the front of the court subpoenas. Chastain was third in line, putting him on the positive side of the alternating strategy—coming after Garwood and before one of the RHD defendants. He was going to be a positive witness for Elias and Harris but he had attempted to refuse being served the subpoena.
Bosch read the name of the service company off the form and called information. It was late but process serving was an odd-hours job. People weren’t always served nine to five. A man answered the phone and Bosch, reading from the Chastain subpoena, asked for Steve Vascik.
“He’s not here tonight. He’s home.”
Bosch identified himself and explained that he was conducting a homicide investigation and needed to talk to Vascik immediately. The man on the other end of the line was reluctant to give out Vascik’s phone number but agreed to take Bosch’s number and contact Vascik with the message.