They sat in silence for a few minutes while Edgar and Rider digested this.
“Okay,” Edgar finally said. “I see what you’re saying. But if Vegas was one big fucking red herring, how does the gun get over there in the agent’s house?”
“That’s what we have to figure out. What if there was someone outside of Tony’s mob connections but close enough to him to know he was washing money and the reason why he made all the trips to Vegas? Someone who either had personal knowledge or maybe followed Tony to Vegas and watched how he worked, how he picked up the money from Goshen, everything? Someone who knew exactly how he did it, who knew Goshen could be set up to take the fall, and that Tony’d be coming back on Friday with a lot of money in his briefcase?”
“They would be able to set the whole thing up, as long as they could get into the agent’s house to plant the gun,” Edgar answered.
“Right. And getting into the house would be no problem. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. He was away at the club for long stretches at a time. Anybody could get in, plant the gun, and get out. The question is who?”
“You’re talking about either his wife or his girlfriend,” Edgar said. “Both could have had that kind of access.”
Bosch nodded.
“So which one do we set up on? The three of us can’t do both, not on a freelance like this.”
“We don’t need to,” Bosch said. “I think the choice is obvious.”
“Which?” Edgar said. “The girlfriend?”
Bosch looked at Rider, giving her the chance to answer. She saw his look and then her eyes narrowed as she went to work.
“It . . . it can’t be the girlfriend because . . . because she called Tony on Sunday morning. On the voice mail. Why would she call the guy if she knew he was dead?”
Bosch nodded. She was good.
“Could have been part of a setup,” Edgar said. “Another misdirection.”
“Could be but I doubt it,” Bosch said. “Plus, we know she worked Friday night. That would make it kind of tough for her to be over here whacking Tony.”
“So then it’s the wife,” Edgar said. “Veronica.”
“Right,” Bosch said. “I think she was lying to us, acting like she didn’t know anything about her husband’s business when she knew everything. I think this whole thing was her plan. She wrote the letters to the IRS and to the OCID. She wanted to get something going against Tony, then when he ended up dead it would point toward a mob hit. Trunk music. Planting the gun on Goshen was just icing. If we found it, fine. If we didn’t, then we’d be sniffing around Vegas until we shelved the case.”
“You’re saying she did this all on her own?” Edgar asked.
“No,” Bosch said. “I’m just saying I think this was her plan. But she had to have had help. An accomplice. It took two to do the actual hit and she sure didn’t take the gun to Vegas. After the kill, she stays at the house and waits while the accomplice goes to Vegas and plants the gun while Luke Goshen’s at the club.”
“But wait a minute,” Rider said. “We’re forgetting something. Veronica Aliso had it very cushy in her existing life. Tony was raking in the bread with his washing machine. They had the big house in the hills, the cars . . . why would she want to kill the cash cow? How much was in that briefcase?”
“According to the feds, four hundred and eighty thousand,” Bosch said.
Edgar whistled softly. Rider shook her head.
“I still don’t see it,” she said. “That’s a hell of a lot of money, but Tony was making at least that much a year. In business terms, killing him was a short-term gain/long-term loss for her. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Then there is something else running through all of this that we don’t know about yet,” Bosch said. “Maybe he was about to dump her. Maybe that old lady in Vegas who said Tony was going to go away with Layla was telling the truth. Or maybe there’s money somewhere we don’t know about. But for now I can’t see anybody else fitting into this picture but her.”
“But what about the gatehouse?” Rider said. “The log shows she never left Friday, the whole night. And she had no visitors.”
“Well, we’ve got to work on that,” Bosch said. “There had to have been a way for her to get in and out.”
“What else?” Edgar asked.
“We start over,” Bosch said. “I want to know everything about her. Where’d she come from, who are her friends, what does she do in that house all day long and what did she do and who did she do it with all those times Tony was away?”
Rider and Edgar nodded.
“There’s got to be an accomplice. And my guess is that it’s a man. And I’ll bet we’ll find him through her.”
The waiter came up with a tray and put it down on a folding cart. They watched silently as he prepared the meal. There were three separate chicken pot pies on the tray. The waiter used a fork and spoon to take the top crust off each and put it on a plate. Next he scooped the contents of each pie out and put it on the crust, served the three cops their dishes and put down fresh glasses of iced tea for Edgar and Rider. He then poured Bosch’s martini from a small glass carafe and floated away without a word.
“Obviously,” Bosch said, “we have to do this quietly.”
“Yeah,” Edgar said, “and Bullets also put us on the top of the rotation. Next call comes in, me and Kiz get it. And we hafta work it without you. That’s going to take us away from this.”
“Well, do what you can. If you get a body you get a body, nothing we can do about that. Meantime, this is what I propose. You two work on Veronica’s background, see what you can find. You got any sources at the Times or the trades?”
“I know a couple at the Times,” Rider said. “And there’s a woman I once had a case with—she was a vic—who’s a receptionist or something at Variety.”
“You trust ’em?”
“I think I can.”
“See if they’ll pull a search on Veronica for you. She had a brief flash of fame a while back. Her fifteen minutes. Maybe there were some stories about her, stories that would have names of people we could talk to.”
“What about talking to her again?” Edgar asked.
“I don’t think we should do it yet. I want to have something to talk to her about.”
“What about neighbors?”
“You can do that. Maybe she’ll look out the window and see you, give her something to think about. If you go up there, see if you can take another look at the gate log. Talk to Nash. I’m sure you can turn him without needing another search warrant. I’d like to take a look at the whole year, know who has been going in to see her, especially while Tony was out of town. We have Tony’s credit records and can construct his travel history. You’ll be able to know when she was in that house alone.”
Bosch raised his fork. He hadn’t had a bite of food yet, but his mind was too full of the case and what needed to be done.
“The other thing is we need as much of the case file as we can get. All we’ve got is the copy of the murder book. I’m going down to Parker Center for my little chat with the IAD. I’ll swing by USC and get a copy of the autopsy. The feds already have it. I’ll also go talk to Donovan in SID and see if he came up with anything we pulled out of the car. Also, he’s got the shoe prints. I’ll get copies, hopefully before the feds come in and take everything. Anything else I’m missing?”
The other two shook their heads.
“You want to see what we get and then put our heads together after work?”
They nodded.
“Cat and Fiddle, about six?”
They nodded again. They were too busy eating to talk. Bosch took his first bite of food, which was already getting cold. He joined them in their silence, thinking about the case.
“It’s in the details,” he said after a few moments.
“What?” Rider asked.
“The case. When you get one like this, the answer is always in the details. You watch, when we break it, the answer will
have been sitting in the files, in the book. It always happens.”
The interview with Chastain at Internal Affairs began as Bosch expected it would. He sat with Zane, his defense rep, at a gray government table in one of the IAD interview rooms. An old Sony cassette player was turned on and everything said in the room was recorded. In police parlance, Chastain was locking up Bosch’s story. Getting his words and explanation in as much detail as possible down on tape. Chastain really wouldn’t begin his investigation until after Bosch’s story was locked in. He would then hunt for flaws in it. All he had to do was catch Bosch in a single lie and he could take him to a Board of Rights hearing. Depending on the size and import of the lie, he could seek a penalty ranging from suspension to dismissal.
In a dull and laborious drone, Chastain read prepared questions from a legal pad and Bosch slowly and carefully answered them with as few words as possible. It was a game. Bosch had played it before. In the fifteen minutes they had before reporting to IAD, Zane had counseled Bosch on how it would go and how they should proceed. Like a good criminal defense lawyer, he never directly asked Harry if he had planted the gun. Zane didn’t really care. He simply looked at IAD as the enemy, as a group of bad cops with the sole purpose of going after good cops. Zane was part of the old school who thought all cops were inherently good and though sometimes the job turned them bad, they should not be persecuted by their own.
Everything was routine for a half hour. But then Chastain threw an unexpected pitch at them.
“Detective Bosch, do you know a woman named Eleanor Wish?”
Zane reached out a hand in front of Bosch to stop him from answering.
“What is this shit, Chastain?”
“Who have you been talking to, Chastain?” Bosch added.
“Wait a minute, Harry,” Zane said. “Don’t say anything. Where’s this going, Chastain?”
“It’s very clear from the orders from the chief. I’m investigating Bosch’s conduct during this investigation. As far as who I have been talking to or where I get my information, you are not privy to that at this point in the process.”
“This is supposed to be about a supposedly planted gun that we all know is bullshit. That’s what we are here to answer.”
“Do you wish to read the order from the chief again? It’s quite clear.”
Zane looked at him a moment.
“Give us five minutes so we can talk about this. Why don’t you go get the points of your teeth filed?”
Chastain stood up and reached over and turned the tape recorder off. As he stepped to the door, he looked back at them with a smile.
“This time I got you both. You won’t get out from under this one, Bosch. And Zane, well, I guess you can’t win them all, can you?”
“You ought to know that better than me, you sanctimonious asshole. Get out of here and leave us alone.”
After Chastain was gone, Zane bent over the tape recorder to make sure it was off. He then got up and checked the thermostat on the wall to make sure it wasn’t a secret listening device. After he was satisfied their conversation was private, he sat back down and asked Bosch about Eleanor Wish. Bosch told him about his encounters with Eleanor over the past few days but left out mention of the abduction and her subsequent confession.
“One of those cops over there in Metro must’ve told him you shacked up with her,” Zane said. “That’s all he’s got. He’s going for an associating beef. If you admit it here, then he’s got you. But if that’s all he gets, then it’s a slap on the wrist at best. As long as he gets nothing else. But if you lie about it and say you weren’t with her when you were, and he can prove you were, then you’ve got a problem. So my advice is that you tell him, yeah, you know her and you’ve been with her. Fuck it, it’s nothing. Tell him it’s over, and if that’s all he’s got, then he’s a chickenshit asshole.”
“I don’t know if it is or it isn’t.”
“What?”
“Over.”
“Well, don’t tell him nothin’ about that unless he asks for it. Then use your best judgment. Ready?”
Bosch nodded and Zane opened the door. Chastain was sitting outside at a desk.
“Where ya been, Chastain?” Zane complained. “We’re waiting in here.”
Chastain didn’t answer. He came in, turned the recorder back on and continued the Q-and-A.
“Yes, I know Eleanor Wish,” Bosch said. “Yes, I’ve spent time with her over the last few days.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know exactly. A couple of nights.”
“While you were conducting the investigation?”
“Not while I was conducting it. At night, when I was done for the day. We all don’t work around the clock like you, Chastain.”
Bosch smiled at him without humor.
“Was she a witness in this case?” Chastain asked with a tone that denoted that he was shocked that Bosch would cross that line.
“Initially, I thought she might be a witness. After I located her and talked to her, I learned pretty quickly that she was not an evidentiary witness of any kind.”
“But you did initially encounter her while you were in your capacity as an investigator on this case.”
“That’s correct.”
Chastain consulted his pad for a long moment before asking the next question.
“Is this woman, that’s the convicted felon Eleanor Wish I am still talking about, is she living in your home at this time?”
Bosch felt the bile rising in his throat. The personal invasion and Chastain’s tone were getting to him. He struggled to remain calm.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” he said.
“You don’t know if someone is living in your house or not?”
“Look, Chastain, she was there last night, okay? Is that what you want to hear? She was there. But whether she’ll be there tonight I don’t know. She’s got her own place in Vegas. She may have gone back today, I don’t know. I didn’t check. You want me to call and ask her if she is officially living in my home at this time, I will.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I think I have everything I need for the time being.”
He then went directly into the standard IAD end-of-interview spiel.
“Detective Bosch, you will be informed of the results of the ongoing investigation into your conduct. If departmental charges are filed, you will be informed of the scheduling of a Board of Rights hearing in which three captains will hear evidence. You will be allowed to choose one of those captains, I will select a second and the third will be chosen at random. Any questions?”
“Just one. How can you call yourself a cop when all you do is sit up here and conduct these bullshit investigations into bullshit?”
Zane reached over and put a hand on Bosch’s forearm to quiet him.
“No, that’s okay,” Chastain said, waving off Zane’s effort to calm things. “I don’t mind answering. In fact, I get that question a lot, Bosch. Funny, but it always seems I get it from the cops I happen to be investigating. Anyway, the answer is that I take pride in what I do because I represent the public, and if there is no one to police the police then there is no one to keep the abuse of their wide powers in check. I serve a valuable purpose in this society, Detective Bosch. I’m proud of what I do. Can you say the same?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bosch said. “I’m sure that sounds great on tape for whoever listens to it. I get the feeling you probably sit alone at night and listen to it yourself. Over and over again. After a while, you believe it. But let me ask you this, Chastain. Who polices the police who police the police?”
Bosch stood up and Zane followed. The interview was over.
After leaving IAD and thanking Zane for his help, Bosch went down to the SID lab on the third floor to see Art Donovan. The criminologist had just come back from a crime scene and was sorting through evidence bags and checking the material against an evidence list. He looked up as Bosch was approaching.
&n
bsp; “How’d you get in here, Harry?”
“I know the combination.”
Most detectives who worked RHD knew the door-lock combo. Bosch hadn’t worked RHD in five years and they still hadn’t changed it.
“See,” Donovan said. “That’s how the trouble starts.”
“What trouble?”
“You coming in here while I’m handling evidence. Next thing you know some wiseass defense lawyer says it got tainted and I look like an asshole on national TV.”
“You’re paranoid, Artie. Besides, we’re not due for another trial of the century for at least a few years.”
“Funny. What do you want, Harry?”
“You’re the second guy who said I was funny today. What happened with my shoe prints and all the rest of the stuff?”
“The Aliso case?”
“No, the Lindbergh case. What do you think?”
“Well, I heard that Aliso wasn’t yours anymore. I’m supposed to have everything ready for the FBI to pick up.”
“When is that?”
Donovan looked up from what he was doing for the first time.
“They just said they’d send somebody by five.”
“Then it’s still my case until they show up. What about the shoe prints you pulled?”
“There’s nothing about them. I sent copies to the bureau’s crime lab in D.C. to see if they could ID the make and model.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I haven’t heard back. Bosch, every department in the country sends shit to them. You know that. And last I heard, they don’t drop everything they’re doing when a package from the LAPD comes in. It will probably be next week sometime before I hear back. If I’m lucky.”
“Shit.”
“It’s too late to call the East Coast now, anyway. Maybe Monday. I didn’t know they suddenly became so important to you. Communication, Harry, that’s the secret. You ought to try it sometime.”
“Never mind that, do you still have a set of copies?”
“Yup.”
“Can I get a set?”
“Sure can, but you’re going to have to wait about twenty minutes or so till I’m done with this.”