Bosch opened his phone and, after doing some research online to get the number, called the Van Nuys jail and asked for the control officer. He identified himself and said he wanted to set up an interview with a custody on the female tier.
“Can it wait?” the officer asked. “It’s Sunday night and I don’t have people to sit on an interview room.”
“It’s a double homicide,” Bosch said. “I need to talk to her.”
“Okay, what’s the name?”
“Elizabeth Clayburgh.”
Bosch heard him type it into his computer.
“Nope,” the officer said. “We don’t have her.”
“Sorry, I meant Clayton,” Bosch said. “Elizabeth Clayton.”
More typing.
“We don’t have her either,” the officer said. “She R-O-R’ed a couple hours ago.”
Bosch knew that meant she was released on her own recognizance.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You let her go?”
“No choice,” the officer said. “Capacity protocol. Nonviolent offense.”
Countywide, the jail system was overcrowded, and nonviolent offenders were regularly released early from minor sentences or released without having to post bail. Elizabeth Clayton had apparently fallen into the latter category and was released after one day and before she could be placed in a drug rehabilitation unit.
“Wait a minute, wasn’t she in detox?” Bosch asked. “You release early from detox now?”
“I don’t have her on the box as having been in detox,” the officer said. “They have a waiting list in detox, anyway. Sorry, Detective.”
Bosch held his frustration in check and was about to thank the officer and hang up. Then he thought about something else.
“Can you put another name in, just to see if you have him?”
“Give it to me.”
“Male, white, last name Brody. I don’t have a first handy.”
“Well, that might be a—no, I found him. James Brody, also arrested Saturday, same charge—prescription fraud. Yeah, he got kicked too.”
“Same time as Clayton?”
“No, earlier. By a couple hours. Most violent offenders are male and that’s who we need to make room for. So the male NVs get out sooner than the ladies.”
Bosch thanked the officer and disconnected. Five minutes later he was in his Jeep, following the winding road down to the 101. He took the freeway north, back into the Valley, and over to Van Nuys. He made a call along the way to Cisco, attempting to make arrangements for Elizabeth Clayton, if he could find her.
The jail from which Clayton and Brody had been released was located on the top floor of the LAPD’s Valley Bureau Headquarters, which anchored a mini–civic center, where local courthouses, a library, and satellite city hall and federal buildings were located at the edges of a public plaza.
Bosch parked on Van Nuys Boulevard at the western end of the plaza and started walking toward the Valley Bureau at the far end of the concrete-and-tree-lined concourse. It was a Sunday evening and the plaza was largely deserted except for the homeless strays who inhabited every parcel of public property in the city. Bosch could not remember the last time he had been in the plaza but thought it had been at least a couple of years. The bushes and shade trees around the contours of the buildings had all been cut back. Many had been replaced with palm trees that offered no cover. He knew this was a disguised effort to keep to a minimum the homeless population who were living in the plaza.
He checked every corner he passed and every homeless face that looked at him. He did not see Clayton or Brody. The library—usually a bastion for those with nowhere to go—was closed. Bosch covered one side of the plaza, until he got to the Valley Bureau building and then turned back and went down the other side. His search turned up nothing and he returned to his car.
Sitting behind the wheel, he thought about things and then called the number Jerry Edgar had given him when Bosch and Lourdes had visited his office. Edgar answered and it sounded like he had been asleep.
“Jerry, it’s Harry. You up?”
“Just taking a nap. I bet you took a long one.”
“Yeah, sort of, but I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“The woman you and Hovan arrested at the pharmacy yesterday with the others?”
“Yeah, with the shaved head.”
“Exactly. I wanted to talk to her. Bella said she got booked into Van Nuys. I just went there and they kicked her loose a couple hours ago.”
“Like I told you, Harry, this is not a high-priority crime. I don’t know what it will take. Maybe if a million people die from this, people will wake up and pay attention.”
“Right, I know. I got a question. Where would she go? She’s put out on the street in Van Nuys, needs a hit pretty bad by now, and she’s on foot.”
“Shit, man, I have no idea where she—”
“Did you book her?”
“Yeah, I did. Me and Hovan booked them all.”
“Did you go through her stuff? What did she have?”
“She had a fake ID, Harry. There was nothing there.”
“Right, right, I forgot. Shit.”
There was a pause before Edgar finally spoke.
“What do you need her for? She’s a lifer, man, I could tell.”
“It’s not like that. One of the guys you busted her with, Brody—he was kicked too.”
“He’s the guy you wanted out of the picture.”
“Yeah, because he had it in for me and for her. Now today I find out he got released a couple hours ahead of her from the same jail. If she runs into him on the street, he’s gonna either hurt her because of me or find a way to use her to get his next hit. Either way, I can’t let that happen.”
Bosch knew that it was not unusual in the drug underworld for a male user to connect with a female in an alliance where one could provide protection while the other procured drugs through sexual barter. Sometimes the alliance wasn’t voluntary on the woman’s part.
“Fuck, Harry, I don’t know,” Edgar said. “Where are you?”
“The Van Nuys jail,” Bosch said. “I looked around, she’s not here.”
There was a longer pause this time before Edgar broke the silence.
“Harry, what’s going on? I mean, it’s been a while, but I remember Eleanor.”
Bosch’s ex-wife and the mother of his daughter. Now deceased. Bosch had forgotten that he and Edgar were partners when he met her and later when he married her. Edgar had picked up on the resemblance in Elizabeth Clayton.
“Look, it’s not that,” Bosch said. “She did me a solid when I was under. I owe her and now she’s out here somewhere on the street. And that guy Brody is too.”
Edgar said nothing, his silence making it clear he was not convinced.
“I gotta go,” Bosch said. “If you think of something, call me back, partner.”
Bosch disconnected.
32
Bosch started driving north on Van Nuys Boulevard, looking at every pedestrian and in every recess behind the facade of every store and business. He knew it was a needle-in-a-haystack proposition but he had no other ideas. He considered calling the Van Nuys Division watch office to ask the lieutenant to put a flag out to all patrol units, but he knew that on a Sunday evening the number of cars on the street would be low and the request from the SFPD would not be treated with any kind of enthusiasm. It could also blow back on him with Chief Valdez asking the same sort of questions Edgar had asked.
So he continued the solo search, turning around at Roscoe and making his way south. He was twenty minutes into it when he got a call back from Edgar.
“Harry, you still up there looking for her?”
“Yeah, you got something?”
“Look, man, I’m sorry about my assumptions from before, okay? I’m sure you have good reason to—”
“Jerry, you have something for me, or are you just calling to shoot the breeze? Because I don’t—”
br /> “I have something, okay? I have something.”
“Then give it to me.”
Bosch pulled to the curb to listen and possibly take notes.
“We have something at the office we call the hot one hundred,” Edgar said. “These are doctors who are on our radar as likely being involved with cappers and shady scrip writing. Doctors we’re building cases on.”
“Was Efram Herrera on there?”
“Not yet, because I hadn’t taken up that complaint, remember?”
“Right.”
“Anyway, I just called one of my colleagues and asked about Van Nuys. She told me there’s a hot one hundred guy up there who runs a clinic on Sherman Way. It’s supposedly seven days a week and some of the intel on him is that if you’re a woman and need a scrip, he is more than likely going to offer a discount for special favors, if you know what I mean. This doctor’s in his seventies, but—”
“What’s the name of the clinic?”
“Sherman Health and Med, at Sherman Way and Kester. The doctor’s name is Ali Rohat. People call him Chemical Ali because he comes through with the meds—the chems—and he’s one-stop shopping. Known to prescribe and fill. If your girl is plugged into the scene up there at all, she’d know about him.”
“She’s not my girl, but I appreciate it, Jerry.”
“I was joking, man. Jesus. Still Hard-Ass Harry, after all these years.”
“That’s right. This guy Chemical Ali, how come he wasn’t shut down with all that you’re saying?”
“Like I told you before, Harry, these things are tough. Medical bureaucracy, Sacramento bureaucracy…We’ll shut him down eventually.”
“Okay, thanks for your help. Anything else comes to mind, hit me back.”
Bosch disconnected and pulled away from the curb. He made a U-turn and took Van Nuys back up to Sherman Way, where he turned west. He drove through the intersection at Kester without seeing the clinic. He continued a few blocks and then turned around.
On the second go-by he saw the clinic in the inside corner of the small shopping plaza. A liquor store and a pizza shop were open as well, and the parking lot was half-filled with cars. Bosch pulled down the sun visor to give him a bit of a visual blind and pulled in. He cruised through the lot, keeping an eye on the clinic. There was a pass-through to either a rear alley or another parking lot. The clinic’s entrance was in this passage, which gave it visual protection. At a quick glance, he saw people milling about outside the door to the clinic but he could not identify anyone.
He turned out of the lot and went down a block before finding an alley that would take him to the rear of the shopping plaza. He cruised by and saw a line of head-in parking spaces behind the plaza’s stores. Parked first in line by the pass-through was a Mercedes-Benz coupe with a vanity plate that said DR ALI. As he went by, he got a better look at the people congregating by the clinic door. Three men, none of whom Bosch recognized, other than that they had the haggard and desperate look of addicts. He almost smiled when he saw one of them was wearing a knee brace similar to the one he had employed.
At Sherman Way he turned right and entered the front lot of the plaza again. He went down the first lane and took a parking place that would allow him to see into the pass-through. The clients were mostly just in silhouette, but he was confident that he would be able to identify a female figure if a woman left the clinic.
Bosch pulled his phone, Googled the name of the clinic, and got a phone number. He called and asked the woman who answered how long the clinic would be open.
“We are closing soon,” she said. “The doctor must leave at eight.”
Bosch thanked her and disconnected. He checked his wrist and realized he had forgotten to put his watch back on after coming in from undercover. He looked at the dash and saw he had twenty minutes until closing time. He settled in and kept his eyes on the clinic’s entrance.
Ten minutes into the surveillance, Bosch’s attention was drawn to his right, to the pizza shop. It appeared to be largely a takeout-and-delivery operation, but two tables were set up on the sidewalk out front. Bosch noticed a man wearing an apron leaning through the front door, gesturing and talking to a man sitting by himself at one of the tables. The seated man was partially hidden from Bosch’s view by a row of potted plants. He would not have even noticed him if the man with the apron had not come to the door.
It looked to Bosch like the aproned man was telling the other man to leave. He was pointing toward the parking lot. Bosch lowered his windows so he might be able to hear the confrontation, but it ended abruptly with the man behind the plants standing up and cursing the pizza man. He then walked out from the seating area and headed down the line of shops toward Sherman Way.
Bosch immediately recognized him. It was Brody.
All at once Bosch felt a charge and a sense of dread. He thought he understood things. Brody knew about Chemical Ali but had no money upon his release from jail and nothing to offer. Brody had followed Elizabeth Clayton from the jail and was watching and waiting for her to emerge with pills in her possession so he could take them and then exact his misguided revenge.
He knew the situation could also be that Clayton and Brody had come to the clinic together and he was simply waiting for her to come out, but from what Bosch knew of her leave-me-alone personality, he didn’t see her as a team player.
Bosch got out of the Jeep, quickly went to the back, and raised the tailgate. Because he was not assigned a vehicle at SFPD, he carried his work kit in the back of his own car. This was a duffel bag filled with personal equipment he might need in any circumstance that might come up during an investigation. He looked back over his shoulder and caught sight of Brody making it to the end of the plaza and turning the corner heading west. Bosch knew that would take him to the back alley and possibly down to the pass-through, where Clayton would emerge if she was in the clinic.
Bosch quickly unzipped the go bag and rummaged through it. He found a Dodgers baseball hat and, putting it on, pulled the brim down over his forehead. Then he found the plastic zip ties and took two. He coiled them so they would fit in the back pocket of his jeans. He zipped the bag closed and dropped the tailgate. He was ready.
After checking the corner of the plaza for any sign of Clayton, Bosch headed to the end of the plaza where he had last seen Brody. He quickly covered the distance and turned onto the sidewalk fronting Sherman Way. There was no sign of Brody, and that confirmed for Bosch that he had slipped down the alley behind the plaza. He moved quickly to the alley entrance and made the turn as well.
Again, there was no sign of the man. The alley was much darker than when Bosch had driven through earlier. The dimming light of dusk was reduced to shadow because of the structures on either side of the alley. Bosch proceeded cautiously, trying to hold to the shadows himself as he moved along.
“Where’s your cane now, shitbird?”
Bosch turned at the sound of the voice in time to see Brody stepping out from between two Dumpsters and swinging a broomstick. Bosch was able to cock his left arm like a chicken wing, raise it, and take the main force of the blow across the forearm.
The impact sent a jolt of pain shooting up Bosch’s arm. But it only served to sharpen his response. Rather than step back, Bosch stepped into Brody, whose momentum was carrying him forward. He brought his knee up hard into Brody’s crotch and heard the air blast out of him. The broomstick clattered to the asphalt and Brody doubled over. Bosch grabbed the back of his shirt, pulled it up over his head and shoulders, and swung him around 180 degrees before releasing him headfirst into the side of one of the Dumpsters. Brody hit and went down with a groan.
Bosch moved in. Because Brody’s arms and wrists were tangled in the shirt, Bosch went to his ankles.
“Nice move,” Bosch said. “Warning me like that. Smart.”
Bosch pulled the zip ties out of his back pocket and secured Brody’s ankles tightly, using both plastic strips to double down on the bindings. Of course, Brody c
ould easily work his hands free of the shirt, Bosch knew, but then he would be faced with the dilemma of how to free his feet. He would have to pogo out of the alley and find someone willing to cut him loose. It would slow him down long enough for Bosch to do what he needed to do.
The quickest way to the clinic was to continue down the alley. As Bosch went along, he noticed two figures moving away in the darkness from the pass-through. It was too dark for him to determine their gender, so he picked up his pace to a trot and soon he got close enough to see they were men.
Bosch moved by the Mercedes, cut into the pass-through, and went to the clinic door. It was locked. He rapped hard on the glass with his fist. He noticed an intercom box mounted on the door’s frame and pushed the button three times.
A few moments later, a woman’s voice sounded from the box. Bosch recognized it from the call he had made to the clinic earlier.
“We’re closed. I’m sorry.”
Bosch pushed the button to respond.
“Police. Open the door.”
There was no response. Then a man’s voice with a Middle Eastern accent came from the box.
“Do you have a warrant?”
“I just want to talk, Doctor. Open up.”
“Not without a warrant. You need a warrant.”
“Okay, Doc. Then what I’m going to do is wait for you at your Mercedes in the alley. I’ve got all night.”
Bosch waited. Ten seconds went by while the doctor apparently considered his options. The door was then opened by a woman wearing nursing scrubs. Behind her stood a man with white hair who Bosch assumed was Dr. Rohat.
The woman pushed her way through the door and past Bosch.
“Wait a minute,” he said.
“I’m going home,” the woman said.