“Sometimes long shots pay off.”
“If this is the will the court accepts, then we would declare Vibiana’s standing and that’s when the fight begins. And it will be a hell of a fight, because it’s not clear what she’s entitled to. We’re going to go in like gangbusters, say she gets it all, and then go from there.”
“Yeah, well, I called Vibiana this morning to tell her what was happening. She said she’s still not sure she’s up for this.”
“She’ll change. It’s like winning the lottery, man. Found money, more than she’ll ever need.”
“And I guess that’s the point. More than she’ll ever need. You ever read those stories about people who win the lottery and how it ruins their lives? They can’t adjust, they meet people with their hands out wherever they go. She’s an artist. Artists are supposed to stay hungry.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s a myth invented to keep the artist down because art is powerful. You give an artist both money and power and they’re dangerous. Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Vibiana is the client and ultimately she makes the call. Our job right now is to put her in the best position to make the call.”
Bosch nodded.
“You’re right,” he said. “So you ready to proceed with the plan?”
“I’m ready,” Haller said. “Let’s do it.”
Bosch pulled his phone and called the Pasadena Police. He asked for Detective Poydras and nearly a minute went by before he was connected.
“It’s Bosch.”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Just thinking about how I know you’re hiding something from me. You got more than you gave yesterday and that won’t happen again.”
“I don’t expect it to. How’s your morning looking?”
“For you my morning’s wide open. Why?”
“Meet me at Ida Forsythe’s house in a half hour. You’ll get the big give then.”
Bosch glanced over at Haller, who was spinning a finger like he was rolling something forward. He wanted more time.
“Make it an hour, actually,” he said into the phone.
“An hour,” Poydras said. “This isn’t some kind of a game, is it?”
“No, no game. Just be there, and make sure you bring your partner.”
Bosch ended the call. He looked at Haller and nodded. They could expect Poydras in an hour.
Haller grimaced.
“I really hate helping the cops,” he said. “Goes against my religion.”
He looked over and saw Bosch staring at him.
“Present company excluded,” he added.
“Look, if all goes well, you get a new client and a high-profile case,” Bosch said. “So let’s go.”
They got out of the Ford in unison, Bosch carrying a file containing the affidavit he had printed the day before, and crossed the street toward the Forsythe house. Bosch thought he saw a curtain move behind one of the front windows as they approached.
Ida Forsythe opened the front door before they had to knock.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon today.”
“Is this a bad time, Ms. Forsythe?” Bosch asked.
“No, not at all,” she said. “Please come in.”
This time she led the way to the front room. Bosch introduced Haller as the attorney representing a direct descendant and heir to Whitney Vance.
“Did you bring the affidavit?” Forsythe asked.
Bosch proffered the file.
“Yes, ma’am,” Haller said. “Why don’t you take a few minutes to sit down and read it? Make sure you agree with the contents before you sign.”
She took the file to the couch and sat down to read. Bosch and Haller took seats across a coffee table from her and watched. Bosch heard a buzz and Haller reached into his pocket for his phone. He read a text and then handed the phone to Bosch. The text was from someone named Lorna.
Cal. Coding called. Needs new samples. Fire last night destroyed lab.
Bosch was stunned. He had no doubt that Haller had been followed to the lab and that the fire was an arson designed to thwart the effort to name a DNA-matched heir to the Vance fortune. He handed the phone back to Haller, who had a killer smile on his face, indicating he thought the same as Bosch.
“It looks correct to me,” Forsythe said, drawing their attention back to her. “But I thought you said we would have to have a notary. I actually am a notary but I can’t witness my own signature.”
“It’s fine,” Haller said. “I’m an officer of the court and Detective Bosch is a second witness.”
“And I have a pen,” Bosch said.
He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out the gold pen that had belonged to Whitney Vance. He watched Forsythe’s face as she recognized the pen he handed her.
They were silent as she signed the document with a flourish, not realizing she was showing her familiarity with using the antique fountain pen. She then capped it, put the document back in the file, and handed both back to Bosch.
“It felt strange signing with his pen,” she said.
“Really?” Bosch said. “I thought you’d be used to it.”
“No, not at all,” she said. “That was his special pen.”
Bosch opened the file and checked the document and the signature page. An awkward silence ensued with Haller just staring at Forsythe. She finally broke the sound barrier.
“When will you introduce the new will to the probate court?” she asked.
“You mean how soon will you get your ten million?” Haller asked back.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said, feigning offense. “I’m just curious about the process and when I might need a lawyer to represent my interests.”
Haller looked at Bosch, deferring the answer.
“We won’t be filing the will,” Bosch said. “And you could probably use a lawyer right now. But not the kind you’re thinking of.”
Forsythe was momentarily stunned.
“What are you talking about?” she said. “What about the heir you found?”
Bosch responded in a calm tone that was counterpoint to the rising emotion in Forsythe’s voice.
“We’re not worried about the heir,” he said. “The heir is covered. We’re not filing the will because Whitney Vance didn’t write it. You did.”
“That’s preposterous,” she said.
“Let me lay it out for you,” he said. “Vance hadn’t written anything in years. He was right-handed—I saw the photos of him signing his book to Larry King—but his right hand had become useless. He didn’t shake hands anymore, and the controller on his wheelchair was on the left armrest.”
He paused there to allow Forsythe to register an objection but she said nothing.
“It was important to him to keep this a secret,” he said. “His infirmities were cause for concern among members of the board of directors. A minority group on the board was constantly looking for reasons to oust him. He used you to write for him. You learned to imitate his handwriting and came in on Sundays, when fewer people were around, to write his letters and sign documents. That’s why you felt comfortable writing the will. If there was a challenge or a handwriting comparison, it was likely that the will would be compared to something else you had written.”
“It’s a good story,” Forsythe said. “But you can’t prove any of it.”
“Maybe not. But the gold pen is your problem, Ida. The gold pen puts you in prison for a long, long time.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I think I want you both to leave now.”
“I know that the real pen—the one you just signed your name with—was in my mailbox at the moment you supposedly found Vance dead. But the photos from the death scene show another pen on that desk. I think you realized that might be a problem so you got rid of it. It wasn’t there when the police went back for round two with the camera.”
As previousl
y planned, Haller came in at that point to play the big, bad wolf.
“It shows premeditation,” he said. “The duplicate pen had to be made and that took time. And planning. Planning means premeditation and that means life without parole. It means the rest of your life in a cell.”
“You’re wrong!” Forsythe yelled. “You’re wrong about everything and I want you to leave. Now!”
She stood up and pointed toward the hallway leading to the front door. But neither Bosch nor Haller moved.
“Tell us what happened, Ida,” Bosch said. “Maybe we can help you.”
“You need to understand something,” Haller said. “You are never going to see a dime of that ten million. It’s the law. A murderer can’t inherit from her victim’s estate.”
“I’m not a murderer,” Forsythe said. “And if you won’t leave, then I will.”
She maneuvered around the coffee table and out of the seating arrangement. She headed toward the hallway, intending to go out the front door.
“You smothered him with a pillow off the couch,” Bosch said.
Forsythe stopped in her tracks, but didn’t turn around. She simply waited for more and Bosch obliged.
“The police know,” he said. “They’re waiting out front for you.”
She still didn’t move. Haller chimed in.
“You go out that door and we can’t help you,” he said. “But there is a way out in this. Detective Bosch is my investigator. If I am representing you, everything we discuss in this room right now becomes confidential. We can work out a plan to go to the police and the district attorney and get the best possible solution.”
“Solution?” she exclaimed. “Is that your way of saying deal? I make a deal and go to jail? That is crazy.”
She abruptly turned and charged over to one of the front windows. She split the curtain to look out into the street. Bosch thought it was a little early for the arrival of Poydras and Franks but knew that the two detectives might have already shown up to see if they could figure out what Bosch was up to.
He heard a sharp intake of breath and guessed that the detectives were indeed parked out there, waiting for the appointed time for them to come knock on the door.
“Ida, why don’t you come back and sit down,” Bosch said. “Talk to us.”
He waited. He couldn’t see her because she had gone to a window behind his chair. Instead, he watched Haller, who had an angle on her. When he saw Haller’s eyes start tracking right he knew she was coming back and that their strategy was working.
Forsythe came into Bosch’s view and slowly returned to her place on the couch. Her face was distraught.
“You have it all wrong,” she said after sitting down. “There was no plan, no premeditation. It was just a horrible, horrible mistake.”
42
Can you be one of the richest, most powerful men on the planet and still be a cheap and petty bastard?”
Ida Forsythe said it with a distant look in her eyes. Bosch couldn’t tell if she was looking at the past or a bleak future. But it was how she began her story. She said that on the day after Bosch visited Whitney Vance the aging billionaire had told her he was dying.
“He had taken ill overnight,” she said. “He looked awful and he hadn’t even gotten dressed. He came into the office around noon in his bathrobe and said he needed me to write something. His voice was barely a whisper. He told me that he felt like things were shutting down inside, that he was dying and that he needed to write a new will.”
“Ida, I told you, I’m your lawyer,” Haller said. “There is no reason to lie to me. If you lie to me I’m out.”
“I’m not lying,” she said. “This is the truth.”
Bosch held up a hand to halt Haller from pressing her. Haller was not convinced but Bosch believed that she was telling the story truthfully—at least from her perspective—and he wanted to hear it.
“Tell it,” he said.
“We were alone in the office,” she said. “He dictated to me the terms of the will and I wrote it in his hand. He told me what to do with it. He gave me the pen and told me to send it all to you. Only…he left something out.”
“You,” Haller said.
“All the years I worked for him,” she said. “At his beck and call, keeping the facade of health intact. All those years and he wasn’t going to leave me anything.”
“So you rewrote the will,” Haller said.
“I had the pen,” she said. “I took some of the stationery home and I did what was right and deserved. I rewrote it to make it fair. It was so little compared to all there was. I thought…”
Her voice trailed off and she didn’t finish. Bosch studied her. He knew that greed was a relative term. Was it greedy, after thirty-five years of service, to scheme a ten-million-dollar payout from a six-billion-dollar fortune? Some might call it a drop in the bucket, but not if it cost a man the last months of his life. Bosch thought of the flyer for the movie that Vibiana Veracruz had put up in the lobby of her building. See this place before the greed! He wondered what Ida had been like before she decided that ten million dollars was her just reward.
“He told me that he had gotten a message from you,” she said, beginning what appeared to be a new strand of the story. “You said you had the information he was looking for. He said it meant that he’d had a child and there were heirs to his fortune. He said he would die happy. He went back to his room after that and I believed him. I didn’t think I’d ever see him again.”
She rewrote the will to include herself and put the package in the mail as instructed. She said that for the next two days, she came to work at the mansion but she never saw Vance. He was sequestered in his room and only his doctor and a nurse were granted access. Things looked grave around the mansion on San Rafael.
“Everybody was sad,” she said. “It was clear that this was the end. He was dying. He was supposed to die.”
Bosch surreptitiously checked his watch. The detectives out front of the house were going to knock on the door in ten minutes. He hoped they wouldn’t jump the gun and ruin the confession.
“Then he called you Sunday,” Haller said, trying to keep the story going.
“It was Sloan who called,” Forsythe said. “Mr. Vance told him to call me in. So I got there and he was at his desk and it was like he had never even been sick. His voice was back and it was business as usual. And then I saw the pen. It was there on the desk for me to write with.”
“Where did it come from?” Bosch asked.
“I asked him,” she said. “He said it came from his great-grandfather, and I said, How can that be? I sent the pen to Detective Bosch. And he said the one on the desk was the original and what he had given me to send with the will was a copy. He said it didn’t matter because only the ink was important. The ink could be matched to the will. He said it would be provenance to help prove the will.”
She looked up from the shining surface of the coffee table and directly at Bosch.
“He told me then that he wanted me to contact you and retrieve the will,” she said. “Now that he was better, he wanted to withdraw it and have a lawyer do it formally. I knew if I brought it back to him, he would see what I had done, and it would be the end for me. I couldn’t…I don’t know what happened. Something broke inside. I picked up the pillow and came up behind him…”
She ended the story there, apparently not wanting to repeat the details of the actual murder. It was a form of denial, like a killer covering the face of the victim. Bosch couldn’t decide whether to buy in to the confession as full and honest or to be skeptical. She could have been setting up a diminished-capacity defense. She also could have been hiding the real motive—that Vance’s plan to have a new will written by a lawyer would surely mean the ten million for her would disappear.
Vance’s dying at his desk still gave her a shot at the money.
“Why did you remove the pen after he was dead?” Bosch asked.
He knew it would be a detail that al
ways bothered him.
“I wanted there to be only one pen,” she said. “I thought if there were two, it would open up a lot of questions about the will you turned in. So after everyone was gone I went into the office and took the pen.”
“Where is it?” Bosch asked.
“I put it in my safe deposit box,” she said.
A long silence followed and Bosch expected it to be broken by the arrival of the Pasadena detectives. It was time. But then Forsythe spoke in a tone that sounded like she was talking to herself rather than to Bosch and Haller.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” she said. “I had taken care of him for thirty-five years and he had taken care of me. I didn’t go there to kill him…”
Haller looked at Bosch and nodded, a signal that he would take it from here.
“Ida,” he said. “I’m a deal maker. I can make a deal with what you just told us. We go in, cooperate, work out a manslaughter plea, and then we shop for a judge sympathetic to your story and your age.”
“I can’t say I killed him,” she said.
“You just did,” Haller said. “But technically you’ll just plead nolo in court—you say ‘no contest’ to the charges. Going any other way is not going to sell.”
“But what about temporary insanity?” she asked. “I just lost it when I realized he would know what I had done. I completely blanked out.”
There was a calculating tone to her voice now. But Haller shook his head.
“It’s a loser,” he said bluntly. “Rewriting the will and taking the pen—these are not the steps of an insane person. To make the jump that all of a sudden you lost the capacity to know right from wrong because you feared Vance would find out what you did? In a courtroom I can sell ice to Eskimos but no jury’s going to buy that.”
He paused for a moment to see if he was getting through to her, then pressed it further.
“Look, a reality check here,” he said. “At your age we have to minimize your time inside. What I’ve outlined is the way to go. But it’s your choice. You want to go to trial on an insanity defense, that’s what we’ll do. But it’s the wrong move.”