“Look at it,” Bosch said. “I’m investigating a series of murders, Dr. Schubert. And I have reason to believe you—and possibly your wife—could be next in line.”
Schubert reacted as if the file were red hot. Bosch was studying him. It was more a reaction of fear than surprise.
“Open it,” Bosch commanded.
“This is not how you do this,” the doctor protested. “You don’t—”
He stopped short when he saw the image clipped to the inside of the file. The close-up of Alexandra Parks’s horribly damaged face. His eyes widened and Bosch assumed that the plastic man had never seen a face like that in all his years of work.
Schubert’s eyes scanned the other side of the file. Bosch had clipped the incident report to the right side, not for its content but because it was a copy of an official document and he knew the imprimatur of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department printed at the top would further his legitimacy in Schubert’s eyes. Harry wanted him thinking he was a real cop for as long as possible. The charade would be over if Schubert asked to see a badge. To keep that from happening, Bosch’s plan was to keep him off balance and play on his fears.
Schubert closed the file and looked stricken. He tried to hand it back but Bosch did not take it.
“Look, what is this about?” he pleaded. “What does it have to do with me?”
“It all started with you, Doctor,” Bosch said. “With you and Ellis and Long.”
The recognition was unmistakable in Schubert’s face. Recognition and dread, as if he had expected all along that his business with Ellis and Long—whatever it was—was not done.
Bosch stepped forward and finally took the file away.
“Now,” he said. “Where can we go to talk?”
42
Schubert used a key to unlock the elevator. The steel box rose slowly, and neither he nor Bosch spoke. Once the doors opened, the two men moved through a high-luxury reception area and waiting room with plush seating and a coffee bar. The spaces were empty and unmanned. It appeared that everyone had gone home for the day. They moved down a hallway and into Schubert’s private office. He flipped on the light switch as they entered a large room with an informal seating arrangement of couch and chairs on one side and a desk and computer station on the other side. The two areas were separated by a folding partition of Japanese design. Schubert sat down heavily in the high-backed leather chair positioned behind the desk. He shook his head like a man who suddenly understands that the trappings of his life that were so perfectly put in place are now changing.
“I just can’t believe this,” he said.
He gestured toward Bosch as though he were responsible for it all. Bosch sat down in a chair in front of the desk and put the file down on the ultra-modern brushed-aluminum desktop.
“Relax, Doctor,” Bosch said. “We’ll work this out. The woman in the photo you don’t want to look at was Alexandra Parks. Does that name ring a bell with you?”
Schubert started to shake his head in a reflex response but then his mind snagged on the name.
“The woman from West Hollywood?” he asked. “The one who worked for the city? I thought they caught somebody for that. A black gang member.”
Bosch thought it interesting that Schubert had described the suspect by race, like there was a causal relationship to the crime. It gave Bosch a small insight into the man he had to convince in the next five minutes to open up and talk.
“Yeah, well, we got the wrong guy,” Bosch said. “And the right guys are still out there.”
“You mean those two men? The two L.A. cops?”
“That’s right. And I need to know what you know about them so that we can stop them.”
“I don’t know anything about this.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I can’t get involved. In my business, reputation is everything. I—”
“Your reputation won’t mean much if you’re dead, and we have good reason to believe you are on their list.”
“That’s impossible. I paid and I’ll pay again by the end of next month. They know that. Why would they—”
Schubert realized that in his panic and fear he had already revealed himself.
Bosch nodded.
“That’s why we need to talk,” he said. “Help us end this thing. We’ll do it quietly and safely. As much as possible I will keep you out of it. I need your information, not you.”
Now Schubert nodded, not so much to Bosch but to acknowledge that a moment he had been dreading for a long time was finally here and had to be dealt with.
“Okay, good,” Bosch said. “But before we start, I need to check in with my partner and tell him where I’m at. It’s a safety thing.”
“I thought you were supposed to be with a partner at all times.”
Bosch took out his phone and typed in the password.
“In a perfect world,” he said. “But with an investigation like this, we cover more ground if we split up. We keep momentum.”
Bosch checked his watch and acted like he was making a call. Instead, he had opened the memo app and started a recording. He then held the phone up to his ear as though he had made the call and was waiting for an answer. He waited several seconds and then left a message.
“Hey, it’s Harry. It’s five forty-five and I’m with Dr. Schubert at his office and I’ll conduct the interview here. He wants to cooperate. I’ll let you know if anything comes up I can’t handle. Talk to you later.”
Finished with his message, he pantomimed disconnecting the call and put the phone down on the file on the desktop. At the same time, he leaned forward to pull his notebook out of his back pocket. He then patted the pockets of his jacket, looking for a pen. Not finding one, he reached over to a cup on the desk that was filled with pens and pencils.
“All right if I borrow one of these and take some notes?” he asked.
“Look, I didn’t exactly say I wanted to cooperate,” Schubert said. “You are forcing me. You tell someone they’re going to get murdered, and sure they want to talk to you and find out what it’s about.”
“So is that an okay on the notes?”
“Whatever.”
Bosch looked at the file that had been placed on the desk and then up at Schubert.
“Why don’t we start with the watch?” he said.
“What watch?” Schubert asked. “What are we talking about?”
“Dr. Schubert, you know what watch I’m talking about. The Audemars Piguet that you bought in Las Vegas two years ago. The ladies’ Royal Oak Offshore model. The one your wife said was stolen but then you said was sold to pay a gambling debt.”
Schubert seemed stunned by Bosch’s knowledge.
“But that was a lie, wasn’t it?” Bosch said. “I can’t help you unless you start talking and telling the truth. Four people are dead, Doctor. Four. What connects them is that watch. You want to protect yourself, then tell me the real story.”
Schubert closed his eyes as if this could help ward off the terrible predicament he was in.
“This can’t go anywhere,” he said. “I have clients. I have…”
He faltered.
“A reputation, yes, you said that,” Bosch said. “I get that. I can’t promise you anything but I’ll do my best for you. If you tell the truth.”
“My wife doesn’t know,” Schubert said. “I love her and it would hurt her very, very badly.”
He said it more to himself, and Bosch elected to hold back, to wait and let him work through it. Finally a resolve seemed to come to him and Schubert opened his eyes and looked at Bosch.
“I made one mistake,” he said. “One awful mistake and…”
He trailed off again.
“What mistake, Doctor?” Bosch asked.
Considering the other players involved, he had an idea where this was going. Ellis and Long were vice cops and they worked in the dark corridors of the sex trade. That was how they had crossed paths with James Allen. There was no reason to
think that Schubert was going in a different direction.
“I had a relationship with a patient,” Schubert said. “She happened to work in the adult entertainment business. Over the years, there were several surgeries. Every enhancement you can think of—lips, breasts, buttocks. We did Botox regularly. There was labiaplasty, face-lift, arm-lift…everything to keep her career going.”
Bosch had no idea what a labiaplasty was but didn’t want to ask for fear it would depress him to depths beyond the level to which the rest of the list had sent him.
“This of course was over a number of years,” Schubert said. “Almost a decade.”
He stopped there as if he had laid out enough for Bosch to figure out the rest. Bosch knew he probably could do just that but he needed Schubert to tell the story.
“When you say ‘relationship,’ what are we talking about?” Bosch asked.
“A doctor-patient relationship,” Schubert said curtly. “It was professional.”
“Okay. So what happened that brought vice officers Ellis and Long into your life?”
Schubert cast his eyes down for a moment and came to grips with what he must do.
“I want your promise that you won’t put this in any police reports that are not held as strictly confidential,” he said.
Bosch nodded.
“You have my promise. I won’t put any of this into any police reports.”
Schubert studied him for a long moment as if taking measure of his truthfulness. He then nodded, more to himself than to Bosch.
“I crossed a line,” Schubert said. “I slept with her. I slept with my patient. Only one time but I have regretted it every moment since.”
Bosch nodded as though he believed him.
“When did this crossing of the line happen?” he asked.
“Last year,” Schubert said. “Right before Thanksgiving. It was a setup. A trap.”
“What is her name?”
“Deborah Stovall. She uses a different name as a performer. I think it’s Ashley Juggs or something like that.”
“You said it was a setup. How?”
“She called the office and asked for me. I do my phone consults at the end of the day. So I called and she said she was having an allergic reaction to a Botox injection received at our offices. I told her to come in first thing the next day and I’d take a look, but she said she couldn’t go out in public because of the swelling of her face. She wanted me to come to her.”
“So you went.”
“Against my better judgment, I did. At the end of my schedule that day, I packed a medical bag and went to her apartment. That part was not unusual. I occasionally make house calls, depending on who the client is. In fact, she was the second of two calls I was scheduled to make that day. But I should have known with her—because of what she does for a living—where this might lead.”
“Where was her place?”
“Over on Fountain near Crescent Heights. An apartment. I can’t remember the exact address. It’s in her medical file.”
“What happened when you got there?”
“Well, she wasn’t exhibiting any symptoms of infection or allergic reaction. She told me that the problem had cleared up during the day and the swelling she had experienced was gone now. I don’t think there ever actually was a problem.”
“Okay, so you went there,” Bosch said. “Then what happened?”
“She had a roommate who was there,” Schubert said. “And this girl just wasn’t wearing any clothes. And one thing—”
“What was the roommate’s name?”
“It was Annie but I don’t know if that was her real name or not.”
“Was she in the adult entertainment world as well?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Okay. So what, you had sex with one or both of them?”
Schubert dropped his chin and made a noise from his throat that Bosch thought was intended to be interpreted as a choking back of tears.
“Yes…I did. I was weak.”
Bosch left him hanging without a sympathetic reaction.
“So I’m assuming there were cameras but you didn’t see them,” he said.
“Yes, there were cameras,” Schubert said quietly. “Hidden cameras.”
“Who did you hear from, the women or Ellis and Long?”
“Ellis and Long. They came here, sat in front of the desk like you are now, and showed me the video on a phone. Then they told me how things were going to be. I was going to do what they told me and pay them what they wanted or they would disseminate the video on the Internet. They would make sure it was seen by my wife and they would make Deborah file a complaint with the California Medical Ethics Board. They would ruin me.”
Bosch nodded, the closest he could come to a sign of sympathy.
“How much did they want?” he asked.
“A hundred thousand dollars starting out,” Schubert said. “And then another fifty thousand every six months.”
Bosch was beginning to get a hook on why Ellis and Long had taken such extreme measures in killing anyone perceived as a threat to their operation. Schubert was a goose laying golden eggs—an annual income stream for them as long as the plastic man wished to cover up his indiscretion.
“So you paid them the first hundred.”
“I paid them.”
“How exactly?”
Schubert had now turned in his desk chair and was no longer looking at Bosch. To his right was a large poster covering one wall that showed an outline of a woman’s body. It was clinical, not erotic, and it detailed outside the lines of the body the many different procedures that could be performed on various parts. It appeared to Bosch that he was addressing the woman on the poster as he answered.
“I told them I couldn’t pay in cash,” he said. “My money—I never see my money. I have a firm that manages the center here, and what comes to me goes to direct deposit and into the control of accountants and money managers. All of this is monitored by my wife. I had an addiction disease that required that we do it this way.”
“A gambling addiction?” Bosch asked.
Schubert turned and glanced at Bosch as if just remembering that he was in the room. He then turned back to the poster.
“Yes, gambling,” he said. “It had gotten out of control and I lost a lot, so they took my money from me. Controlled it. It was the only way to save my marriage. But it means I can’t just go to the bank or write a check that size without a cosigner.”
“So you gave jewelry instead,” Bosch said. “Your wife’s watch.”
“Yes, exactly. She was away on a holiday. Out of town. I gave them the jewelry. Her watch, my watch, several diamond pieces. It was their idea to make it look like a burglary. When she came home, I told her there had been a break-in and the police were on it. They were investigating. Ellis broke a window in the French doors at the back of the house so it would look like that’s how the robbers got in.”
Bosch reached over to the desk for the file. He slid it out from beneath the phone.
“Let me take a look at something here,” he said.
He opened the file and flipped through the reports clipped to the right side until he found the timeline he had put together that morning.
Schubert’s story fit with the facts Bosch had accumulated. He gives the jewelry to Ellis and Long as an extortion payoff. They then strike a deal with the Nguyen brothers to sell it as estate property at Nelson Grant & Sons. The jewelry starts to sell—Harrick buys the ladies’ watch for his wife as a Christmas present. Ellis and Long start to get their money and the Nguyen brothers get a cut for selling it without delving into its provenance.
Things go wrong when Alexandra Parks breaks the crystal on her watch and sends it for repair to the shop in Las Vegas. When she learns there may be a problem with the watch’s ownership, Parks, head of the consumer protection unit and married to a law officer, quietly tries to look into the watch’s history. She calls Nelson Grant & Sons to make inquiries. Maybe she
tells them her husband is a Sheriff’s deputy, maybe they knew that from when he bought the watch in the first place. Whatever was said, her call worries the Nguyen brothers to the point that they contact Ellis and Long and say, “We might have a problem here.”
Ellis and Long decide on an extreme response: take out Parks before she investigates further and pulls the thread on their extortion operation. Bosch had to assume that Schubert wasn’t the only victim in the scheme and that there was a bigger moneymaking machine afoot, using the women to entice men into performing before the hidden cameras.
Ellis and Long concoct a scheme to murder Parks and make it look like a sexually motivated crime. They use James Allen, a snitch they controlled and may have used in similar extortion schemes, to procure a condom containing semen that could be planted at the crime scene to send investigators in the wrong direction toward the wrong man.
That theory left James Allen and the question of why he was in turn murdered. To tie up loose ends? Or had he threatened the vice cops in some way? The murder of Lexi Parks had splashed big in the media. Allen could have caught the story, then put two and two together after his customer Da’Quan Foster was arrested based on DNA evidence. If he made a move against Ellis and Long, asked for money or threatened them in any way, it could have cost him his life. He was murdered, and his body was staged in a way that might send investigators off in the wrong direction. Ellis and Long would have been aware of the earlier murder, the body left in the alley off El Centro. They may have even been responsible for it.
The misdirection, Bosch thought. There was a pattern in it. A repeating pattern. First Alexandra Parks, then James Allen.
43
Ellis joined Long in the Charger.
“’Bout time,” Long said.
“Quit whining,” Ellis said. “I was taking care of business with the girls. What’s the status here?”
“Schubert came out and Bosch confronted him. Then they went inside. That was thirty-five minutes ago.”
Ellis nodded and thought about things. Schubert had been inside with Bosch long enough that it should be assumed that he was spilling his guts. That signaled the endgame to Ellis. It was time to close down the operation. Time to close down all operations.