The Wrong Side of Goodbye

  Haller’s statement was underlined by the sound of two car doors slamming out in the street. Poydras and Franks.

  “That’s the police,” Bosch said. “They’re coming to the door.”

  “How do you want to play it, Ida?” Haller asked.

  Forsythe slowly rose to her feet. Haller did as well.

  “Please invite them in,” she said.

  Twenty minutes later Bosch stood with Haller on the sidewalk on Arroyo and watched as Poydras and Franks drove away with Forsythe in the backseat of their plain wrap.

  “Speaking of looking a gift horse in the mouth,” Haller said. “They actually seemed pissed off that we cleared their fucking case for them. Ungrateful bastards.”

  “They’ve been behind the curve on this one since the get-go,” Bosch said. “And they aren’t going to look so good at the press conference when they have to explain that the suspect turned herself in before they even knew she was the suspect.”

  “Oh, they’ll find their way around that,” Haller said. “I have no doubt.”

  Bosch nodded in agreement.

  “So, guess what?” Haller said.

  “What?” Bosch said.

  “While we were in there I got another text from Lorna.”

  Bosch knew that Lorna was Haller’s case manager.

  “Was it more info on California Coding?”

  “No, she got the call from CellRight. There is a genetic match between Whitney Vance and Vibiana Veracruz. She’s the heir and in line for a big chunk of money—if she wants it.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll talk to her and give her the news. See what she wants to do.”

  “I know what I would do,” Haller said.

  Bosch smiled.

  “I know what you would do too,” he said.

  “Tell her we could file it as a Jane Doe,” Haller said. “Eventually we would have to reveal her to the court and opposing parties, but starting out we could keep her name out of it.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Bosch said.

  “Another option is to go to corporate counsel and lay out what we’ve got—the DNA, your tracing of the paternal lineage—and convince them that if we get into a fight we’ll take it all. Then we negotiate a nice settlement from the estate and we go away, leaving money and the corporation on the table.”

  “That’s an idea, too. A real good idea, I think. You can sell ice to Eskimos, right? You could get this done.”

  “I could. The board of directors will take that deal in a heartbeat. So you talk to her and I’ll do some more thinking on it.”

  They checked both ways before crossing the street to their cars.

  “So are you going to work on Ida’s defense with me?” Haller asked.

  “Thanks for saying ‘with me’ and not ‘for me,’ but I don’t think so,” Bosch said. “I think I just quit being your investigator on this one. I’m taking a full-time gig with San Fernando PD.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, my brother from another mother. Keep in touch about that other thing.”

  “Will do.”

  They parted ways in the middle of the street.

  43

  Bosch hated the Ford he was driving. He decided it was time to go back to LAX and retrieve his own car after several days of vehicular subterfuge. From South Pasadena he took the 110 down through the center of the city, past the towers of downtown, and past USC and the neighborhood where Vibiana Duarte had lived most of her short life. He eventually connected to the Century Freeway and went west to the airport. He was handing his credit card to the garage attendant to cover an enormous parking fee when his phone buzzed with a 213 number he didn’t recognize. He took the call.

  “Bosch.”

  “It’s Vibiana.”

  Her voice was a low but near hysterical whisper.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a man. He’s been here all day.”

  “He’s in your loft?”

  “No, down on the street. I can see him from the windows. He’s watching.”

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t want Gilberto to hear me. I don’t want him to be scared.”

  “Okay, calm down, Vibiana. If he hasn’t made any move to come up and get inside, then that’s not his plan. You are safe as long as you stay inside.”

  “Okay. Can you come?”

  Bosch grabbed his credit card and receipt from the attendant.

  “Yes, I’m coming. But I’m at the airport. It’s going to take me a while. You need to stay inside and don’t answer the door until I get there.”

  The parking gate was still down. Bosch covered the phone and yelled out the window at the attendant.

  “Come on, open the gate! I gotta go!”

  The gate finally started to rise. Bosch went back to the phone call as he powered through the exit.

  “This guy, where exactly is he?”

  “He moves around. Every time I look, he is somewhere else. I first saw him in front of the American and then he moved down the street.”

  “Okay, try to track him. I’ll call when I get there and you give me his location. What does he look like? What’s he wearing?”

  “He, uh, jeans, gray hoodie, sunglasses. He’s a white guy and he’s too old for the hoodie.”

  “Okay, and you think he’s alone? You don’t see anybody else?”

  “He’s the only one I can see but there might be somebody on the other side of the building.”

  “Okay, I’ll check that when I get there. Just sit tight, Vibiana. Everything’s going to be all right. But if something happens before I get there, call nine-one-one.”

  “Okay.”

  “And by the way, the DNA came back. It’s a match. You are Whitney Vance’s granddaughter.”

  She didn’t respond. Only silence.

  “We can talk about it when I get there,” Bosch said.

  He disconnected. He could have kept her on the phone but Bosch wanted both hands free for the drive. He retraced his path, jumping back onto the Century and taking it to the 110. Midday traffic was light and he made good time as he raced toward the looming towers of downtown. Most prominent of these was the U.S. Bank Tower and Bosch couldn’t help but think that whoever was watching Vibiana Veracruz had been dispatched from the fifty-ninth floor.

  He exited on 6th Street downtown and worked his way into the Arts District. He called Vibiana and told her he was in the neighborhood. She said she was looking through the window as they spoke and could see the watcher under the scaffolding that wrapped the front of the building across the street, which was closed and under renovation. She said the scaffolding offered many places for him to watch from.

  “That’s okay,” Bosch said. “What works for him will also work for me.”

  He told her he would call her back as soon as the situation was resolved.

  Bosch found parking in a lot by the river and then headed toward Vibiana’s building on foot. He saw the structure wrapped in scaffolding and entered through a side entrance where several construction workers were sitting on stacks of drywall during a break. One of them told Bosch he was in a hard-hat area as he passed.

  “I know,” he said.

  He followed a hallway toward the front of the building. The first floor was being prepared for commercial use and every unit had a garage-door-size opening to the street. No windows or doors had been installed yet. In the third unit he saw the back of a man in jeans and a gray hoodie. He was leaning against the right wall at the edge of the front opening and was well under the scaffold. It was good cover from the outside, but on the inside his back was to Bosch and he was vulnerable. Bosch quietly pulled his gun from its holster and started moving toward him.

  Noise from an electric saw being used on an upper level of the building covered Bosch’s approach. He got all the way up on the man, then grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. He s
hoved him back against the wall and jammed the barrel of his pistol into the man’s neck.

  It was Sloan. Before Bosch could say a word, the man brought his arm up, knocked the gun away, and then spun Bosch into the wall. Sloan pulled his own gun and it was now pressed into Bosch’s neck. Sloan’s elbows pinned Harry’s arms up and against the wall.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Bosch?”

  Bosch stared at him. He opened up his right palm in surrender and let his gun drop into his left until he was holding it by the barrel.

  “I was going to ask you the exact same thing,” he said.

  “I’m watching out for her,” Sloan said. “Just like you.”

  Sloan stepped back. He withdrew his weapon and swung it behind his back and tucked it under his belt. It left Bosch with the upper hand but he knew he didn’t need it. He holstered his weapon.

  “What’s going on, Sloan? You work for them.”

  “I worked for the old man. The company on the paychecks changed but I never stopped working for him. Including right now.”

  “He really sent you that day you came to my house?”

  “That’s right. He was too sick to call or talk. He thought he was dying and wanted to know who or what you’d found.”

  “You knew what I was doing.”

  “That’s right. Just like I knew when you found her.”

  He jerked his head in the direction of Vibiana’s building.

  “How?”

  “They’ve got you wired Bosch. You and your lawyer. They’re tracking your phones, your cars. You’re old-fashioned. You never look up.”

  Bosch realized Haller had nailed it. They had watched him from a drone.

  “And you’re part of all of that?” he asked.

  “I acted like I was,” Sloan said. “They kept me on after Mr. Vance died. Until last night, when they burned out a DNA lab. I quit. Now I’m going to watch over her. It’s what he would have wanted and I owe him that.”

  Bosch studied him. He could be a Trojan horse sent in by Trident and the corporation. Or he could be sincere. Bosch reviewed the information that he had recently gathered on Sloan. That he had been with Vance for twenty-five years. That he had attempted to revive Vance after he was already dead. That he had called the police to report the death instead of attempting to avoid an investigation. Bosch thought it added up to sincerity.

  “Okay,” he said. “If you want to watch over her, then let’s do it right. This way.”

  They stepped through the open doorway and out from under the scaffolding. Bosch looked up at the windows of the lofts on the fourth floor. He saw Vibiana looking down. He pulled his phone and called her as he headed toward the entrance of her building. She skipped the greeting.

  “Who is he?” she said.

  “He’s a friend,” Bosch said. “He worked for your grandfather. We’re coming up.”

  44

  After Bosch left Vibiana in Sloan’s capable hands, he headed north toward the Santa Clarita Valley. He had promised Captain Trevino that he would give him an answer on the job offer by the end of the day. As he had told Haller, he intended to take the job. He was excited about the idea of being a full-time cop again. It didn’t matter if his turf was two square miles small or two hundred square miles large. He knew it was about cases and about always being on the right side of things. He’d found both in San Fernando and decided he would be there for as long as they would have him.

  But before he could accept the offer, he needed to make things right with Bella Lourdes and assure her he was not taking her job but only holding it until she got back. He got to Holy Cross by 4 p.m. and hoped to catch Lourdes before she was released. He knew that getting out of a hospital was sometimes a daylong process and he believed he was on safe ground.

  Once he got to the hospital, he retraced the path he had taken before to the trauma floor. He located Lourdes’s private room but entered to find the bed empty and unmade. There was still a bouquet of flowers on a chest of drawers. He checked a small closet, and on the floor, there was a pale green hospital gown. On the clothes bar, there were two metal hangers that probably once held the going-home outfit brought by Bella’s partner, Taryn.

  Bosch wondered if Bella had been taken for a medical test or if she had a last therapy session that had drawn her out of her room. He walked down the hall to the nursing station and inquired.

  “She hasn’t left yet,” a nurse told him. “We’re waiting for the doctor to sign the paperwork and then she’ll be ready to go.”

  “So where is she?” he asked.

  “In her room, waiting.”

  “No, she’s not. Is there a cafeteria around?”

  “Just the one on the first floor.”

  Bosch took the elevator down and looked around the small and uncrowded cafeteria. There was no sign of Lourdes.

  He knew he could have missed her. As he was going down in one elevator she could have been going up in another.

  But a low-grade feeling of panic started to creep into Bosch’s chest. He remembered Taryn being outraged that Lourdes was suffering the indignity of being treated in the same hospital as her abductor and rapist. Bosch had sought to assure her that Dockweiler would be stabilized and moved downtown to the jail ward at the county hospital. But he knew that no arraignment had been set yet for Dockweiler because of his precarious health status. He realized that if Dockweiler’s medical condition was too critical for even a bedside arraignment in the hospital jail ward, then it could also be too critical for a transfer from Holy Cross to County.

  He wondered if Taryn had told Bella that Dockweiler was in the same medical center or if she had figured it out on her own.

  He went to the information desk in the hospital’s main lobby outside the cafeteria and asked if there was a specific ward for treatment of spinal injuries. He was told spinal trauma was on the third floor. He jumped on an elevator and went back up.

  The elevator opened on a nursing station that was located in the middle of a floor plan resembling an H. Bosch saw a uniformed Sheriff’s deputy leaning over the counter and small-talking with the duty nurse. Harry’s anxiety kicked up another notch.

  “This is the spinal trauma center?” he asked.

  “It is,” the nurse said. “How can I—”

  “Is Kurt Dockweiler still being treated here?”

  Her eyes made a furtive move toward the deputy, who straightened up off the counter. Bosch pulled the badge off his belt and displayed it.

  “Bosch, SFPD. Dockweiler’s my case. Where’s he at? Show me.”

  “This way,” the deputy said.

  They headed down one of the hallways. Bosch could see an empty chair outside a room several doors down.

  “How long have you been fucking off at the nursing station?” he asked.

  “Not long,” the deputy said. “This guy’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’m not worried about that. Did you see a woman get off the elevator?”

  “I don’t know. People come and go. When?”

  “When do you think? Now.”

  Before the deputy could answer, they got to the room and Bosch put his hand out to his left to hold him back. He saw Bella Lourdes standing at the foot of the bed in Dockweiler’s room.

  “Stay here,” he said to the deputy.

  Bosch slowly entered the room. Lourdes gave no indication she had noticed him. She was staring intently down at Dockweiler, who lay in the elevated bed surrounded by all manner of medical apparatus and tubes, including the breather that went down his throat and kept his lungs pumping. His eyes were open and he was staring back at Lourdes. Bosch easily read his eyes. He saw fear.

  “Bella?”

  She turned at the sound of his voice, saw Bosch, and managed a smile.

  “Harry.”

  He checked her hands for weapons. There was nothing.

  “Bella, what are you doing in here?”

  She looked back at Dockweiler.

  “I wanted to see him.
Face him.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “I know. But I had to be. I’m leaving here today, going home. I wanted to see him first. Let him know that he didn’t break me like he said he would.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Did you think I came to kill him or something?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what I thought,” Bosch said.

  “I don’t need to. He’s already dead. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?”

  “What?”

  “Your bullet cut his spine. He’s a rapist and now he’ll never be able to do that to anyone again.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Let me take you back to your room now,” he said. “The nurse said the doctor has to see you before they can sign you out.”

  In the hallway Bosch cut off the deputy before he could speak.

  “This never happened,” he said. “You make a report and I report you for abandoning your post.”

  “Not a problem, never happened,” the deputy said.

  He remained standing by his chair and Bosch and Lourdes headed down the hall.

  On the way back to her own room, Bosch told Lourdes about the offer from Trevino. He said he would only accept it if she approved and understood that he would drop back down to part-time reserve officer as soon as she was ready to return.

  She gave her approval without hesitation.

  “You’re perfect for the job,” she said. “And maybe it will be a permanent thing. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I might never come back.”

  Bosch knew that she had to be considering that she could easily and deservedly receive a stress-related out from the job. She could pick up her entire salary and do something else with her life and her family, be away from the nastiness of the world. It would be a tough choice but the specter of Dockweiler overshadowed it. If she never came back, would it haunt her? Would it give Dockweiler a final power over her?

  “I’m thinking you’re going to be coming back, Bella,” he said. “You’re a good detective and you’re going to miss it. Look at me, scratching and fighting to keep a badge on my belt at my age. It’s in the blood. You’ve got cop DNA.”