After a few moments he decided to move around to the back of the house to try to see what was going on in the kitchen. Valdez had instructed him to stay outside the house. He didn’t say where outside.
Bosch quickly moved down the side and into the backyard. The kitchen was at the opposite corner and the table where Dockweiler and Trevino sat facing each other was in an eating nook located in the glass sunroom. The blinds were three-quarters open and the room glowed with the interior lights. Bosch knew that the men inside would only see their own reflections in the glass and not him standing outside.
He could hear what was being said in the room because of the open window over the sink. And almost all of it was coming from Dockweiler. One of his hands had now been uncuffed so that he could use a pencil to draw a map on a large piece of paper spread on the table.
“They call this section the John Ford Forty,” he said. “I think he filmed part of one of his John Wayne epics there and it’s mostly used for westerns and horror stuff—the cabin-in-the-woods screamers they make all the time and go straight to streaming. There’s like sixteen different cabins back in there that can be used for filming.”
“So where is Bella?” Trevino pressed.
“She’s in this one here,” Dockweiler said.
He used the pencil to draw something on the map but his upper torso blocked Bosch’s view from behind him. Dockweiler then put the pencil down on the table and did some tracing on the map with his finger.
“You go in here, tell whoever’s at the gate that you need to get to the Bonney house. They’ll take you up there and that’s where you’ll find her. Everything’s breakaway in these houses. Walls, windows, floors. You know, for filming. Your girl’s in a camera trench under the flooring. It lifts up in one piece.”
“This better not be bullshit, Dockweiler,” Valdez said.
“No bullshit,” Dockweiler said. “I can lead you there if you want.”
Dockweiler gestured as if to say, Why not give me a chance? And when he did so, his elbow hit the pencil and it rolled off the table, bouncing off his thigh to the floor.
“Oops,” he said.
He leaned down and reached to the floor to retrieve the pencil, a maneuver made difficult because his left wrist was still handcuffed behind his back to one of the rungs of the chair.
Through the window behind Dockweiler, Bosch had a unique vantage point on what happened next. It seemed to unfold before him in slow motion. Dockweiler took a swipe at the fallen pencil on the floor, but couldn’t quite reach it because he was bound to the chair in which he sat. However, the momentum of the swing carried his arm up and under the table. He gripped something attached to the underside of the table, then swung his arm out and above it.
He was now pointing a semiautomatic pistol directly across the table at Trevino.
“Nobody fucking move!”
The three men facing Dockweiler froze.
Bosch slowly and quietly pulled his weapon from its holster and put a two-handed aim on Dockweiler’s back. He knew in a legal sense he was clear to shoot and it would be a righteous kill, but he didn’t have a clean shot, with Trevino sitting on the other side of the target.
Dockweiler used the barrel of his gun to point Valdez farther into the kitchen. The police chief complied, holding his hands up in front of his chest.
In front of Dockweiler the kitchen counters created a U where he corralled the three cops. He told Trevino to stand up and back into the U with Valdez and Sisto.
“Easy now,” Trevino said as he backed up. “I thought we were talking and that we were going to figure this thing out.”
“You were talking,” Dockweiler said. “And now it’s time to shut the fuck up.”
“Okay, okay, no problem.”
Dockweiler then ordered them one at a time to unholster their weapons, put them on the floor, and kick them across the floor toward him. Dockweiler rose from the chair and brought his left arm around, the chair dangling by the handcuffs. He brought his hand down on the table and ordered Sisto to come over and remove the cuffs from his wrist. Sisto complied and then moved back into the confines of the kitchen counters.
With Dockweiler now standing, Bosch had a bigger target but he still didn’t have a safe shot. He didn’t know enough about the science of ballistics to guess how much a shot through glass would deviate from aim. He just knew that if he fired multiple shots, those that followed the first should be clean.
Additionally, there was the risk that Dockweiler might be able to squeeze off a shot if the first bullet through the glass did not hit its mark.
Bosch looked down to be sure of his footing on the concrete patio and took a step closer to the glass. Dockweiler was less than eight feet away with a plate of glass of unknown thickness between them. Bosch was resigned to hold off until he had to fire.
“Where’s Bosch?” Dockweiler asked.
“He’s out front going through your truck,” Valdez said.
“I want him in here.”
“I can get him.”
Valdez made a move toward the archway, which immediately drew Dockweiler’s aim.
“Don’t be stupid,” Dockweiler said. “Call him and tell him to get in here. Don’t tell him why, just tell him to get in here.”
Valdez slowly reached to his belt and pulled off his phone. Bosch realized that his own phone was about to ring and it would give away his position. He was about to reach into his pocket to silence it, when he realized that he wanted exactly that to happen.
Bosch shifted one step to his right so that he was on an angle that put Dockweiler directly between his aim and Valdez. Trevino and Sisto were in the clear and Bosch was counting on LAPD training still being ingrained in Valdez and his knowing when the shot would come.
He maintained the two-handed grip and waited for the call. His phone buzzed at first, giving him a split-second warning. Then came the chirping sound—a piercing ringtone chosen long ago by his daughter. Bosch had his aim on center mass—Dockweiler’s back—but his attention was focused on the back of his head.
He saw Dockweiler react. He had heard the phone. He raised his head a few centimeters and then turned it slightly left as he attempted to locate the origin of the sound. Bosch waited another split second for Valdez to react and then opened fire.
Bosch put six bullets through the window in less than three seconds. The sound reverberated off the glass and the roof overhang, creating a tremendous blowback of sound. Glass crashed and the blinds kicked up and splintered as bullets tore through them. Bosch was careful to keep his aim on a horizontal plane. He wanted no shots to angle down toward the floor, where he hoped Valdez was.
Dockweiler dropped forward onto the table and then rolled left and fell off onto the floor. Bosch raised his aim and watched while Trevino and Sisto, who were still standing, moved toward the man.
“Hold fire!” Trevino yelled. “He’s down, he’s down!”
The glass in the window frame was gone and the blinds hung in tatters. The smell of burnt gunpowder seared Bosch’s nose. He grabbed the blinds and tore them down so he could enter through the door-size window.
He first checked Valdez, who was sitting on the floor, his legs spread in front of him, his back to the lower cabinets. His phone was still in his hand but his call to Bosch had now gone to message. He was staring at Dockweiler on the floor five feet from him. His eyes came up to Bosch’s.
“Everybody okay?” Bosch asked.
Valdez nodded and Bosch noticed the bullet hole in the drawer two feet to the left of his head.
Bosch next looked down on Dockweiler. The big man was chest-down on the floor, his face turned to the left. He was not moving but his eyes were open and he was breathing, a labored whistling sound to each of his intakes. Bosch saw three bullet impacts. One was center left about halfway down his back, one was on his left buttock, and one was on his left elbow.
Bosch got down on the floor next to the suspect and looked across his torso at Trevino.
“Good shooting,” Trevino said.
Bosch nodded. He then leaned further down and looked up under the table. He saw the holster attached to the underside of the tabletop. Trevino followed his eye line and did the same.
“Son of a bitch,” he said.
“A good survivalist is ready for anything,” Bosch said. “I think we’re going to find weapons hidden all over the place in here.”
Bosch pulled a set of latex gloves out of his pocket. As he was putting them on, he leaned down close to Dockweiler’s face.
“Dockweiler, can you hear me?” he asked. “Can you talk?”
Dockweiler swallowed hard before trying to respond.
“Get me…hosp…hospital.”
Bosch nodded.
“Yeah, we’re going to get to that,” he said. “But first, we need to know where Bella is. You tell us that and we call in the RA.”
“Harry,” Valdez said.
Bosch leaned back on his haunches.
“You guys might want to step out,” he said. “I’ll handle this.”
“Harry,” Valdez said again. “We can’t do it this way.”
“You want Bella alive?” Bosch asked.
“You said before you doubted she was alive.”
“That was before I found hot food for her in the truck. She’s alive and he’s going to tell us where.”
Sisto stepped over to the table and grabbed the map that Dockweiler had drawn.
“We have this,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s a treasure map,” Bosch said. “If you think that’s where she is, you better run over there and be the hero.”
Sisto looked over at Valdez and then down at Trevino, not quite comprehending that Dockweiler had been playing them the whole time in order to get a hand free to grab his hidden gun.
Valdez raised his phone and clicked off the call to Bosch. He then hit a speed-dial button.
“We need a rescue ambulance to this address,” he said. “Suspect is down, multiple gunshot wounds. We’ll need the Sheriff’s Department to roll. Tell them we need an OIS team.”
Valdez looked at Bosch as he disconnected, the silent message being that they would do this by the book.
Bosch leaned down and tried one more time with Dockweiler.
“Where is she, Dockweiler?” he said. “Tell us now or you won’t make it to the hospital alive.”
“Harry,” Valdez said. “Get up and go outside.”
Bosch ignored him. He leaned further down to Dockweiler’s ear.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Fuck…you,” Dockweiler said between gulps of air. “I tell you, nothing changes for me. Better you know…that you failed her.”
He managed to curl his lip back, in what Bosch assumed was a smile. Bosch started to reach a gloved hand toward the bullet wound on his back.
“Bosch!” Valdez yelled. “Outside now! That’s an order!”
The chief climbed to his feet and moved in to yank Bosch away from Dockweiler if necessary. Harry looked up at him and then stood. They stared at each other until finally Bosch spoke.
“I know she’s here,” he said.
33
Bosch knew he had little time to stay on the case before the Sheriff’s Department Officer-Involved Shooting team arrived on scene and sequestered him and the other San Fernando officers. While paramedics worked to stabilize Dockweiler and then lift him onto an ambulance gurney, Bosch took a high-powered flashlight out of one of the boxes in the garage and headed down the sloping backyard toward the Haskell Canyon Wash.
He was forty yards from the house when he heard his name called from behind. He turned to find Sisto running to catch up.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Going to search the wash,” Bosch said.
“For Bella? Then I’ll help.”
“What about Dockweiler? Who’s going to the hospital with him?”
“I think the captain. But it doesn’t matter. Dockweiler’s not going anywhere. I heard the EMTs talking. They said a bullet mighta cut his spinal cord.”
Bosch thought about that for a moment. The idea that Dockweiler might survive and finish his life in a wheelchair invoked no sympathy in him. What Dockweiler had done to his victims—including Bella, though Bosch didn’t yet know exactly what Bella had suffered at Dockweiler’s hands—disqualified him from ever earning anything like compassion.
“Okay, but we’ve gotta move quickly,” Bosch said. “Once the shooting team gets here, I’m out. We all are.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
Bosch reached into his pocket. He still had the flashlight he had grabbed off the front lawn as backup. He turned it on and tossed it to Sisto.
“You go one way and I’ll go the other.”
“You think she’s tied up to a tree or something?”
“Maybe. Who knows? I just hope she’s alive. When we get down there, we split up and look.”
“Roger that.”
The men continued down the slope. The wash was little more than an overgrown ravine that was left undeveloped because of the potential for flooding. Bosch guessed that most days it was a creek but during storms it could become a river. They passed signs warning of flash flooding during rainstorms, signs meant to keep kids from playing in the wash.
As the slope started to level off, the ground was softer and Bosch noticed what looked like a track worn into the pathway. It was no more than six inches wide and three inches deep and he followed it all the way to the water’s edge. Before splitting from Sisto he crouched down and put his light into the mini-trench. He saw what looked like a tire tread.
Bosch raised the beam of his light and followed the track to the shallow waters of the wash. The water was clear and he could see to the bottom. He saw what looked like gray sand in places, large chunks of gray rock in others. Some of the flat polished edges were the giveaway. It was concrete that had been formed and hardened and then broken. It was construction debris.
“Harry, come on, are we going to look for her?” Sisto asked.
“Just hold on a second,” Bosch said. “Be still.”
Bosch turned off his light and stayed at the water’s edge. He thought about what he had seen and what he knew. The concrete rubble. The guns and supplies. The wheelbarrow and the hand truck stolen from Public Works. The hot food on the front seat of the truck. He realized what Dockweiler had been up to and what he was doing at the tailgate of his truck earlier that night when the chief’s phone interrupted him.
“Dockweiler’s been building something,” he said. “He was taking wheelbarrows of concrete and dirt down here and dumping it in the wash.”
“Okay,” Sisto said. “What does that mean?”
“It means we’re looking in the wrong place,” Bosch said.
He abruptly stood up and turned his light back on. He turned and looked back up the slope toward the kitchen lights of Dockweiler’s house.
“I had it wrong,” he said. “We have to go back.”
“What?” Sisto asked. “I thought we were going to—”
Bosch was already running back up the slope. Sisto stopped talking and started following him.
The climb back up winded Bosch and he was moving at a modest trot by the time he was passing by the house. Through the windows of the sunroom he could see men in suits and knew that Sheriff’s investigators were now on the scene. He didn’t know if they were members of the Officer-Involved Shooting team and didn’t stop to find out. He saw Chief Valdez with them. He was gesturing and pointing, most likely giving them the initial rundown of what had happened.
Bosch continued down the side of the house and into the front yard.
There were now two Sheriff’s patrol cars and one plain wrap parked out front, but everybody was apparently inside. Bosch went straight to the back of Dockweiler’s pickup and started pulling out the two-wheeled hand truck. Sisto caught up with him at the back of the truck and helped him lower the heavy c
art to the ground.
“What are we doing, Harry?” he asked.
“We have to move those boxes in the garage,” Bosch said.
“Why? What’s in them?”
“Not what’s in them. What’s under them.”
He pushed the cart toward the garage.
“Dockweiler was about to take this out of his truck and start moving these boxes,” he said.
“How come?” Sisto asked.
“Because he had hot food in the truck and wanted to deliver it.”
“Harry, I’m not following.”
“That’s okay, Sisto. Just start moving boxes.”
Bosch attacked the first row of boxes with the hand truck, sliding its blade under the bottom box and then tilting the cart and the column of boxes back. He quickly backed out of the garage and to the front of the pickup. He placed the column down, yanked the hand truck back, and quickly went back for more. Sisto worked with only his own muscles. He moved two and three boxes at a clip, stacking them out on the driveway near the pickup.
In five minutes they had made a large inroad into the stacks, and Bosch came upon a rubber mat that covered the floor and was designed to be used to catch oil from the vehicle parked in the garage. He used the hand truck to move a few more stacks of boxes and then reached down and rolled back the mat.
There was a round metal manhole cover flush with the concrete floor. It had the seal of the city of San Fernando embossed on it. Bosch crouched down and put two fingers into what looked like air holes and tried to pull up the heavy metal plate. He couldn’t do it. He looked around for Sisto.
“Help me with this,” he said.
“Hold on, Harry,” Sisto said.
He disappeared from Bosch’s view and was gone for a few seconds. When he came back he had a long iron bar bent into a handle on one end and a hook on the other.
“How the hell did you find that?” Bosch asked as he got out of the way.
“I saw it on the workbench and wondered what it was for,” Sisto said. “Then I figured it out. I’d seen the guys from Public Works using them in the street.”
He fit the hook into one of the holes in the iron plate and started pulling it up.