A book in the Harry Bosch series, 2011

Suicide Run

It was slow on night watch. They were submarining-cruising close to the station so at end of watch they could quickly pull into the back lot, dump the car and check out. Jerry Edgar was driving. It was his idea to submarine. He always had some place to get to, even at midnight. Harry Bosch had no place to go but an empty house.

Whatever plans Edgar had, they changed when they got the call from the watch commander and were sent to the Orchidia Apartments.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jerry Edgar muttered. “Fifteen minutes and we’d a been clear.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Harry Bosch told him. “If it checks out we’ll be done in fifteen minutes.”

Edgar turned off La Brea onto Franklin and they were less than two minutes away. Bosch and Edgar were the night shift detectives in Hollywood Division, part of a new roving response team instituted by the commander. Captain LeValley wanted a detective team to roll to any crime of violence instead of pulling the patrol reports the following morning. On paper it was a good theory and Bosch and Edgar had in fact cleared two armed robberies and a rape in their first four days spent working nights. But for the most part they took reports and did little more than pass cases off to the appropriate investigators the following day.

The air they drove through was clear and crisp. They kept the windows up and their expectations down. The call was a suicide run. They needed to make a confirmation for the patrol sergeant on scene and then they’d be on their way. With any luck they’d still make it back to the station by midnight.

The Orchidia was a sprawling pink apartment complex off Orchid and nestled into the hillside behind the Magic Castle parking lot. It was an apartment complex that had been around for as long as Bosch remembered. In the old days it was a place where studios put up the new starlets just signed to contracts. These days the people who lived there paid their own way.

There were two patrol cars with flashing blues out front. A van from the Scientific Investigation Division and a station wagon from the coroner’s office were already there as well. This told Bosch that the sergeant on scene either had forgotten about the night shift detectives or didn’t think them necessary. He told Edgar to park behind the patrol car that didn’t have a light bar on the roof. That would be the sergeant’s car. Bosch would make sure he didn’t go anywhere until Bosch wanted him to.

As they got out Edgar looked over the roof of their cruiser at Bosch.

“I hate night watch in Hollywood,” he said. “All the suicides come out at night.”

It was true. This would be their third suicide in four nights.

“In Hollywood, everything comes out at night,” Bosch said.

There was a patrol officer at the entrance and he took badge numbers from Bosch and Edgar and then directed them to apartment 6. The front door of the apartment was open and they walked into a nest of activity. It was the end of shift for everybody and everybody was in a hurry. Bosch saw the watch sergeant, who turned out to be a woman named Polly Fulton, standing in a hallway that most likely led to a bedroom.

“Detectives,” she said. “Glad you could swing by. Right in here.”

“What do you mean, we just got the call,” Edgar said.

“Really?” Fulton said. “I called it in at least forty-five minutes ago. The watch must have his hands full.”

She gestured for them to pass by her and they did. The hall ended at three doors: a closet, a bathroom and a bedroom. They entered the bedroom and saw that all the activity was centered on a naked woman lying on the bed. Two coroner’s investigators, a forensics tech, a photographer and another patrol officer were all hovering around the bed.

The woman was on her back, her arms at her sides. She had been young and beautiful and remained so even in death. Her hair was blond and it wreathed her face, curving under her chin. Her skin was pale white and her breasts were full, even while she was lying down. A slight line of discoloration could be seen running along the bottom curve of each breast. Surgical scars.

There was a diamond teardrop pendant on a silver chain on her chest between her breasts. Her stomach was flat and her pubic hair was neatly trimmed short and in a perfect inverted triangle.

Edgar made a light catcall whistle between his teeth.

“Now why would she want to go and do the Marilyn Monroe?” he asked. “A girl lookin’ like that.”

No one answered. Bosch just stared at the woman on the bed while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. He knew that the knee-jerk reaction was to think that beauty solved all other problems. Same thing with money. But he had seen enough suicides to know that neither was true. Not even close.

“Lizbeth Grayson,” Sergeant Fulton said. “Twenty-four. Hasn’t been here in the City of Angels long. Still has an Oregon driver’s license in her purse.”

Fulton had come up next to Bosch and spoke while they both stared at the body. There was no embarrassment about the dead woman being naked and exposed. It was police work.

Fulton held up a clipboard. Lizbeth Grayson’s driver’s license was clipped to it. Bosch noted that she was from Portland.

“What else?” he asked.

“She’s an actress-aren’t they all. She’s got a drawer full of headshots over there. Looks like she did a walk-on bit on Seinfeld last year. You know they film that here, even though it’s supposed to be New York. Anyway, the résumé is on the back of the latest headshot. She hasn’t worked a lot-at least not the kind of jobs that she wanted to put on the résumé.”

Bosch could almost feel Fulton’s eyes drop to the small, perfect triangle of pubic hair. He knew what she was thinking. The silicone and the trim job might indicate a certain lifestyle and other means of income. Bosch looked back up at the face. Lizbeth Grayson hadn’t needed anything in life but that face. He wondered if anybody besides her mother had ever told her that.

“Anyway,” Fulton said, “on the side table we’ve got an empty bottle of Percodan left over from breast enhancement surgery last year and a ‘good-bye, cruel world’ note. It’s looking pretty cut-and-dried, Detective. We won’t be wasting your time on this.”

Bosch moved his focus to the table next to the bed and stepped over.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

On the table was an empty glass with a white residue at the bottom, a plastic pill bottle and a notepad. Nothing else. Bosch bent down to study the pill vial, which was standing up on the table. It was a painkiller prescribed to Lizbeth Grayson eight months earlier. Take as needed for the pain. He wondered if that pain included the need to end it all. He took out a notebook and wrote down the name of the physician who prescribed the drug and presumably performed the breast enhancement surgery.

He next looked at an open spiral notebook that was on the table next to the pill bottle. There were four lines written in pencil on the page.

There’s no use anymore

I give up

I give up

I give up!

He studied it for a moment, paying attention to the words that were underlined and understanding that she was putting the emphasis on a different word in each sentence. He reached down to the notebook so that he could see if there was writing on any of the other pages.

“Not yet, Detective.”

Bosch turned and saw the SID photographer standing behind him. It was Mark Baron. They had worked many crime scenes together. Baron gestured toward his camera.

“I haven’t shot any of that yet,” he said. “I don’t want it moved.”

“Okay, hold on a second.”

Bosch stooped down so he could look beneath the table. It had no drawers but there was a single shelf and it held a stack of People magazines. There was nothing on the rug beneath the table. He got down on his knees and lifted the bed skirt. There was a pair of slippers under the bed but nothing else.

Bosch got up and stepped back to let Baron get close to take his shots. He walked back to Fulton.

“Who found her?”

“The landlord. He said he got a call from her agent and then another call from her acting coach. They were worried about her. She missed a big audition or something today. The landlord has a passkey and came in. He said the coach was very convincing.”

“Was she on display like that or covered?”

“She was covered. The coroner’s people did that.”

Bosch nodded.

“Where’s the landlord?”

“He went back to his place. He lives on-site. He was looking pretty pale.”

“Get him.”

“This is pretty simple, right? We’re all going to get out of here in a few minutes, right?”

Bosch looked at Fulton. Even she wanted to turn pumpkin at midnight.

“Just get the landlord, please.”

Fulton left and Bosch went over to the bureau, where Edgar was looking through the contents of the top drawer. There were several different photos. There was a stack of 8x10 glossies that showed a collage featuring Lizbeth Grayson in varying poses and costumes. No matter what she was wearing or what the facial pose was, it was impossible to hide her beauty in character. Bosch imagined that it opened some doors but kept others closed. She would never have been taken seriously as an actress with that face.

“Man, this girl had it all going for her,” Edgar said. “Why’d she want to go and waste it all?”

“Maybe she didn’t.”

Edgar dropped the photo he was looking at back into the drawer and looked at Bosch.

“Harry, what are you seeing?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Nothing yet. I’m just saying. I’m asking the question, you know?”

“Don’t go crazy on this. You want to talk to the landlord, fine. Let’s talk to him and put this thing to bed-no pun intended.”

“All I’m saying is that you can’t come into this with a preconceived idea, you know? It’s infectious.”

Bosch sauntered over to one of the coroner’s investigators, who was putting equipment back into a toolbox. Bosch knew him, too. Nester Gonzmart.

“How’s it look, Nester?”

“Looks like we’re out of here, boss.”

“What do you have for TOD?”

“We took the liver temp. I’m going to say between midnight and four this morning.”

“So twenty-four hours tops. Any trauma?”

“Not a hangnail, man. This is a clean scene. Sometimes it’s hard to believe but it’s looking to me like what it is. We’ll get the tox in about two weeks and we’ll see the Perc on the screens. That’ll be it.”

“Make sure you get it to me.”

“You got it, Harry.”

He snapped the latches on the toolbox and headed out of the room with it. Bosch knew he would be back with the stretcher. They were going to take Lizbeth Grayson on a ride downtown.

“Everybody?” Baron said. “Can I get everybody to step back into the hall so I can get my wide shots?”

Bosch moved toward the hall, wondering where Fulton was with the landlord.

“Thank you,” Baron said.

Fulton was in the front living room with a man who was small, slight and maybe as old as the apartment building. He was introduced as Ziggy Wojciechowski. He recounted for Bosch and Edgar his finding of Lizbeth Grayson dead. It was the same story Fulton had already related.

“Was the door locked?” Bosch asked.

“Yes. I have a passkey to all the apartments. I used it.”

Bosch glanced over at the front door and saw the security chain hanging on the jamb.

“The chain wasn’t on?”

“No, no chain.”

“Did she pay her rent or did somebody pay it for her?”

It was always good to throw in a changeup, something unexpected at the interview subject.

“Uh, she paid. She always paid with a check.”

“What about boyfriends?”

“I don’t know. I don’t spy on my tenants. The Orchidia offers privacy. I don’t intrude.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“Same answer, Detective. I don’t-”

“Mr. Wojciechowski, when did you come into the apartment and find her?”

The landlord seemed a little confused by the way the questions jumped around.

“It would have been about ten fifteen. I had watched the beginning of the news on channel five-Hal Fishman. Her coach called again and I finally said I would check on her just so they would stop calling.”

“When you came in, were the lights on?”

Wojciechowski didn’t answer as he contemplated the question.

“Think about when you entered. What did you see? Could you see anything or did you have to put on the lights?”

“I could see the light at the end of the hall. Her bedroom. The light was on.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, Mr. Wojciechowski, that will be enough for now. We may have to talk later.”

He watched the little man walk out of the apartment. Edgar came up close to him then so that they could speak quietly.

“I don’t like that look in your eyes, Harry. I’ve seen it before.”

“And?”

“It tells me you’re in love. You want this to be something it’s not.”

“The chain wasn’t on the door.”

“So what? She was being considerate. She knew she was going to check out and she didn’t want anybody to have to break down the door. We’ve seen that a hundred times before, easy.”

“The lights in the bedroom were left on.”

“So?”

“People don’t leave the lights on. They want it to be like they’re going to sleep at night. They want to go easy.”

Edgar nodded his head.

“All right, I’ll give you that. But it’s not enough. It’s an anomaly. You know what that is? Something that deviates from the norm. What we have here is a deviation within the norm. It’s not something we-”

There was a sudden flash. Bosch turned to see Baron coming from the hallway into the living room. He had fired off a shot at Bosch and Edgar.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Misfire. You guys want me to shoot anything else? I’m done with Marilyn Monroe in there.”

“No,” Edgar said. “You’re clear, Mark.”

Baron, a short man with a widening middle, threw a mock salute and walked out the open front door of the apartment. Bosch looked at Edgar sharply. He didn’t like the junior member of the team making the call to break up the crime scene. Edgar read him correctly.

“Look, Harry, it is what it is. We’re done here. Let’s sign off and wait on the toxicology.”

“We’re not done. We’re just beginning. Go out there and bring Baron back. I want him to shoot everything in this place.”

Edgar blew out his breath impatiently.

“Look, partner, you may have convinced yourself of something but you haven’t convinced me or anybody else here that-”

“There’s no pencil.”

“What?”

“On the bed table. There’s no pencil to go with the note. If she wrote the note and took the pills, then where’s the pencil?”

“I don’t know, Harry. Maybe it’s in a drawer in the kitchen. What’s it matter?”

“You’re saying she writes a suicide note and gets up naked to put the pencil away in a kitchen drawer? Listen to yourself, Jerry. This scene doesn’t work and you know it. So what do you want to do about it?”

Edgar stared at Bosch for a moment and then nodded as if conceding something.

“I’ll go get the photographer back,” he said.

Bosch stared at Lizbeth Grayson on the television screen. She was tearful, beautiful and in character.

“I’ve tried with him every way I know how,” she said. “There’s no use anymore. I give up.”

“Stop it right there,” Bosch said.

Gloria Palovich paused the video. Bosch looked at her. She had been Lizbeth Grayson’s acting coach.

“When was this recorded?” he asked.

“Last week. It was for yesterday’s reading. That’s why I was concerned. She worked for almost two weeks to prepare for that audition. She got fresh headshots. She was putting everything into it. When she didn’t show up… I just knew something was wrong.”

“Did she take notes during your sessions?”

“All the time. She was a wonderful student.”

“What sort of notes?”

“Mostly on accent and delivery. How to best use dialogue to convey the inner emotions.”

Bosch nodded. He realized that Lizbeth Grayson’s suicide note was anything but a farewell. It was the opposite. It was part of a young woman’s efforts to thrive and succeed.

He looked around the acting studio. He felt uneasy, like he had missed something in the conversation. Then he remembered. The headshots he had seen in the bureau drawer in Lizbeth Grayson’s apartment were not new. He had studied the dead woman on the bed and none of the photos in the drawer showed her with the same hairstyle. They were old.

Bosch looked at the acting coach.

“You said she got new photos. Are you sure?”

Palovich nodded emphatically and pointed over Bosch’s head.

“Absolutely. She felt so good about this job that she held nothing back. She was going after it on every level.”

Bosch turned and looked at the bulletin board that ran the length of the wall behind him. It was covered with a blizzard of headshots. All of Palovich’s students, he assumed. He found the shot of Lizbeth Grayson and it was indeed a recent shot. Her blond hair curved under her chin and the easy smile.

Bosch felt himself getting angry. Someone had picked this flower just as it had been about to bloom.

He stepped over and pulled the tack holding the photo to the board. He studied the shot in his hand. There had been no copies of this photo in the apartment. He was sure of it.

“When did she get this taken, do you know?” he asked.

“Last week, I think,” Palovich replied. “She brought in the stack and gave me the first one off the top for the board.”

“There was a stack?”

“Yes, usually they come in hundred-copy stacks. You can never have too many photos. You have to have your headshots out there or you don’t get the calls.”

Bosch nodded. He had worked in Hollywood long enough to know how it worked. He turned the photo over. There was a listing of Lizbeth Grayson’s acting credits on the back. Also listed were her contact numbers through an agent named Mason Rich.

He turned it back over to look at the photo again.

“Why are the headshots you see always in black and white but everything they make these days is in color?” he asked.

“I think it’s because the black and white better shows the contrast the movie camera will pick up,” Palovich responded.

Bosch nodded, even though he didn’t understand her answer and knew nothing about contrast and photography.

The picture cut off across Grayson’s sternum. She was wearing an open-collar blouse and Bosch could see the chain around her neck. The photo cut off before showing the teardrop pendant he remembered from the night before.

He turned back to check the screen. The picture remained paused and his eyes were immediately drawn to the chain around Lizbeth Grayson’s neck. She was wearing an open shirt over a simple white tank top that said CRUNCH across it. But the pendant, which was clearly visible at the bottom of the chain, was not a diamond. It was a single pearl.

Bosch pointed to the screen.

“You see the pearl?”

“Yes, she always wore that.”

“Always?”

“Yes, it had been her grandmother’s. She believed it brought her good luck. Once in class we did some biographical sketches. She told us all about it then. In our classes we all have alter egos with alternate names. Her name was Pearl. When I called on her, if I used the name Pearl, she would respond as that alter ego. Do you understand?”

“I think so. Do you have any tapes of her as Pearl?”

“I think so. I could look.”

“I don’t know if it is significant or not. I’ll let you know. Did you ever see Lizbeth wearing a pendant with a diamond in it?”

Palovich thought for a moment and then shook her head.

“No, never.”

Bosch nodded and thanked her for her time. He asked if he could take the headshot and she said that was fine. At the door to the studio she stopped him with a question.

“You don’t think she did this to herself, do you, Detective Bosch?”

Bosch looked at her a long moment before answering. He knew he should keep his assumptions and theories to himself. But he could tell she needed the answer.

“No, I don’t.”

She shook her head. The alternate to suicide was somehow more horrible to contemplate.

“Who would do this?” she asked. “Who could do this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.”

In the crime analysis office Bosch sat with an officer named Kizmin Rider. He had worked with her before and knew she was one of the quickest cops on a computer he had ever seen. She was clearly going places in the department and he knew she was being fast-tracked for administration. But the last time they had worked together she had confided that she really wanted to be a detective.

When she was ready Bosch told her what he wanted.

“I’m looking for suicides in the last five years,” Bosch said. “Young females.”

“That’s going to be a lot.”

She worked the keyboard and went into the department’s database. In less than a minute she had it.

“Eighty-nine suicides of females between twenty and thirty.”

Bosch nodded, trying to think of ways to narrow the search.

“Do you have it by method?” he asked.

“Yes. What are you looking for?”

“Pills.”

“That would be overdose.”

She typed it in and had the answer in seconds. “Fifty-six.”

“What about by profession? I think I’m looking at actresses only.”

“That would be a catchall: entertainer.”

She typed and had the answer before Bosch took his next breath.

“Twenty-six.”

“White females?”

She typed.

“Twenty-three.”

Bosch nodded. He could think of nothing else to narrow it down to cases similar to Lizbeth Grayson’s phony suicide.

“Can you print out the names and case numbers for me?”

“No problem.”

Thirty seconds later Bosch had the list and was ready to go down to archives to pull the files.

“You need any help with that, Harry?” Rider asked.

“You mean like you might want to do some detective work?”

She smiled.

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “It gets kind of boring up here looking at the computer all day.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was almost lunchtime.

“Tell you what. I’ll go pull the twenty-three files and then meet you in the cafeteria for lunch. We can look through them then. I could probably use the help because my partner thinks this is the wildest goose chase I’ve ever been on. He’s working on our backlog while I do this. And he’s losing his patience.”

She kept her smile.

“I’ll get a table and see you down there.”

Bosch opened his briefcase and pulled out the Grayson file.

“Start with this.”

In the cafeteria, Bosch put the stack of files down on a table Rider had commandeered. She had half of a tuna fish sandwich on a plate and was looking through the last few documents in the Grayson file.

“Are you sure you can do this?” he asked her.

“No problem. What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know yet. But if you read that file, you know there are inconsistencies in the Grayson case. The suicide note was a plant and a piece of jewelry is missing. A silver-chain necklace with a single pearl on it.”

Rider frowned.

“What about the autopsy?”

“That was yesterday. We’re waiting on the tox.”

“Was she raped?”

“No abrasions. No DNA recovered.”

“What do you think happened, Harry?”

“What do I think happened? I think somebody drugged her and had his way with her when she couldn’t resist. And then he let her OD. Now ask me what I can prove.”

“What can you prove?”

“Nothing. That’s why I pulled these files.”

“Looking for what?”

“Sometimes you don’t know what you are looking for until you find it,” he explained. “But I’m convinced Lizbeth Grayson was murdered with such careful planning that it wasn’t the only time this happened.”

“The guy hit before.”

Rider nodded at the stack of thin files.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bosch said. “So I am looking for anything that is a commonality between her and any of these other suicides.”

Rider frowned.

“And we’ll know it when we see it,” she said.

“Hopefully.”

They got to work. Bosch split the stack in two and they both began working through the files. When one of them finished with a file they put it on the stack for the other to read. This way they each looked at every file. Because the cases were suicides the files were thin and filled largely with autopsy and toxicological reports. All contained photos of the victims in death and most contained a photo of the victim in life as well.

Hollywood has always ground up a good share of the young women who come with their hopes and dreams. Ever since actress Peg Entwistle gave up her celluloid dreams and jumped off the H on the Hollywood sign, many others have followed suit-but in less attention-getting ways. It is the dark secret of the industry. It grinds many of the fragile ones to powder. The powder blows away.

The files contained tragically similar stories. Young women whose lives collapsed when they didn’t get the part and realized they never would get the part. Young women taken advantage of by those who could. Men mostly, but not always. Young women who were clearly fragile before even getting to Hollywood, who had come like moths to the flame, seeking to fill the empty spaces inside with long-shot fame and fortune.

But there were also files that contained only questions. Suicides without explanation, involving women who had growing credits and reason to be hopeful about their lives and careers. A few left one- or two-line notes but Bosch could not tell if these were actual suicide notes or possibly lines from auditions or parts they were playing.

Bosch studied the photos, many of which were professional headshots, and the lists of credits. He found nothing in common with Lizbeth Grayson other than that all the women had been young and hopeful. There was no shared acting school or common agent. No showcase play or work as an extra on the same movie. He didn’t see the connections and began to think that maybe Jerry Edgar was right. He was chasing something that wasn’t there.

He was on the second to the last file when Rider spoke up.

“Harry, are you finding anything?”

“No, not yet. And I’m running out of files.”

“What will you do?”

“I have to decide whether to drop it or continue on. If I continue I’ll have to work it on the side. In homicide they call it working a hobby case. You work it when you have the time. The next step is to conduct a field investigation-go out and talk to the people who knew these women, check their apartments, see if anybody has any of their belongings still. I can tell you right now my lieutenant isn’t going to let me go off and do that. I’ll have to work it like a hobby.”

“Who’s the lieutenant in Hollywood? Is that Pounds?”

“Yep. Pounds. He’s not much of an expansive thinker.”

Rider smiled and nodded.

“Look, I’m sorry I wasted your lunch break,” Bosch said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Besides, I’m not finished yet.”

She held up the five remaining files she needed to look through. He smiled and nodded. He liked her confidence. They dropped into silence and dove back into the files.

In ten minutes Bosch was finished with the files and had found nothing that would bump the case up higher than a hobby. He asked Rider if she wanted a cup of coffee but she said no. He got up to get a cup for himself. The cafeteria was thinning out and getting quiet after the lunch rush. When he got back to their table Rider was standing. Bosch thought she had finished and was about to go. But she was standing because she was excited.

“I think I found something,” she said.

Bosch put his coffee down on the table and looked at what she had. She was holding two headshot photographs. They were of two different women.

“This first one is from a case last year,” Rider said. “Her name was Nancy Crowe. Lived on Kester Avenue in Sherman Oaks. This other one is Marcie Conlon. Died five months ago. Also an overdose. Lived up in Whitley Heights.”

“Okay.”

Bosch looked at the headshots. The women had entirely different looks. Crowe had short dark hair and pale white skin. Conlon was blond and tan. Just by looking at the photos Bosch would have guessed that Crowe was a serious actress and Conlon was not. He knew that he was subscribing to a sweeping generalization so it was not something he would say out loud.

“Look,” Rider said.

She put the photos down on the table side by side.

“What’s the same?”

Bosch immediately saw what had been there all along and simply gone unnoticed in his survey of everything contained in the files. In the Crowe photo the subject was posed, looking around the corner of a brick wall. Bosch guessed that she was supposed to look mysterious, the photo showing depth of character and perhaps making up for her not being a knockout beauty. In the Conlon photo the woman was posed with her back leaning against a brick wall. Her pose was meant to be alluring, even sexually intriguing, and it counterposed the soft beauty of her features against the hard brick wall.

“The brick wall,” Bosch said.

Using her finger, Rider pointed out bricks in each photo that were the same. They were either chipped or scuffed in some way that made them unique. It was clear that both actresses had posed at the same brick wall.

“But now look,” she said.

She flipped the photos over, and below the listing of credits was the name of the photographer. The names were different but each name was followed by a matching location. Hollywood & Vine Studios.

“So you have different photographers using the same studio,” Bosch said.

He was thinking out loud, trying to take it to the next step.

“Did you look through the other files where there are headshots?” he asked.

“No, I just discovered this connection.”

“Good work.”

Bosch quickly went back to the stack of files and soon they were pulling the headshot photos out of files where they found them.

“Every actress in the city needs headshots,” Rider said as she worked. “It’s like death and taxes. You walk down Hollywood Boulevard and there are ads for photographers on every light pole.”

In five minutes they had six headshot photos of dead actresses with photo credits from six different photographers but all from Hollywood & Vine Studios. Lizbeth Grayson’s photo-the shot Bosch had borrowed from the acting coach-was one of the six.

Bosch spread the six shots out side by side and stared at them.

“Could this just be a coincidence?” Rider asked. “Maybe Hollywood and Vine Studios is a place all the photographers use.”

“Maybe,” Bosch said, continuing to stare at the photos.

“I guess we could check out wheth-”

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said excitedly.

He picked up one of the photos and looked at it closely. It was a shot of an actress named Marnie Fox. She had supposedly committed suicide by overdose six weeks earlier. He nodded and put it back down. He then went to the Grayson file.

“What?” Rider asked.

From the file he pulled one of the photos of Lizbeth Grayson in death and placed it down next to the shot of Marnie Fox. Now it was Bosch’s turn.

“What do you see that is the same?” he asked.

Rider moved in to look closely at the side-by-side photos. She got it quickly.

“The pendant. They are both wearing the same kind of pendant.”

“What if they are not duplicates?” Bosch asked. “What if they are wearing the same pendant? A diamond pendant the killer takes from one victim and then puts on his next victim. And from that victim he takes her pearl necklace and puts it-”

“On the next victim,” Rider finished.

Bosch started putting the files back into a stack he could carry.

“What’s next?” Rider asked. “Hollywood and Vine Studios?”

“You got that right.”

“I’m going with you.”

Bosch looked at her.

“You sure? Do you need to get an okay?”

“I’ll call it a long lunch.”

On the way Rider made a list of the photographers’ names and handed it to Bosch. When they got to Hollywood they parked in the lot by the Henry Fonda Theater and Bosch found a pay phone to call Jerry Edgar. He brought him up to date and his partner seemed miffed that he was working the case with an analyst, but Bosch reminded Edgar that he hadn’t been interested in Bosch’s hunch about Lizbeth Grayson. Properly cowed, Edgar said he would meet them at Hollywood & Vine Studios.

The photo studio was on the third floor of an old office building at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine. The building had been updated in recent years with each floor having been gutted and turned into lofts. This was attractive to the creative industry. Most of the listings on the building directory in the lobby were production companies, talent management offices and various other enterprises from the fringe of Hollywood. Bosch assumed that having an address that was as steeped in myth as Hollywood and Vine was a bonus to them all.

They waited ten minutes in the lobby for Edgar and then Bosch grew annoyed. Hollywood Division was less than five minutes away. He pushed the button and told Rider they weren’t waiting any longer. On the ride up they worked out how they would handle the visit to the photo studio. They stepped out of the elevator and approached a counter where there was a young man with his head down reading a script. He got to the bottom of the page before looking up at them.

Bosch badged him and asked his name. He said Louis Reineke and he spelled it for them. Bosch asked to see a photographer named Stephen Jepson and Reineke told him that Jepson wasn’t there. Bosch proceeded down the list of six photographers. None were there and none could be reached, according to Reineke. The counterman became increasingly nervous as Bosch asked about the photographers.

“So none of these photographers are here and you have no contact information for them either,” Bosch said.

“We rent space by the hour,” Reineke said. “The photographers come in, pay for an hour or whatever time they want and then they split. There is no need for numbers. Are you guys from Internal Affairs or something?”

Bosch was getting annoyed that the lead was hitting a dead end.

“We’re from homicide,” he said. “Where is the manager of the studio?”

“He’s not here. I’m the only one here.”

“All right, when was the last time any of these six men were here taking photographs?”

“I’ll have to check the books.”

He moved down the counter and opened a drawer. From it he took a large accounts book and opened it. The book appeared to list rentals of studio space by date, time and photographer. Reineke ran his finger backward over the columns and finally stopped.

“He was here last Friday,” he said. “Shot for an hour.”

“He? Which one?”

Reineke looked back down at the book.

“That would have been Stephen Jepson.”

There was something off about the conversation with Reineke. It was like they were missing each other.

“So how would that have worked?” Bosch asked. “He just came in and said he wanted some space to shoot?”

“Yeah, like that. Or he might’ve called first to make sure we weren’t booked up. Sometimes that happens.”

“Did he call?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Can we go back and look at the studio space?”

“Sure. We’re empty right now. I’ve got a three o’clock and then a four.”

They went around the counter and through a door into the loft space. There were three different photo setup areas with light stands and pull-down backgrounds. There were a few pieces of furniture to use as props. There were wires running across the ceiling and black curtains that would allow the different photo areas to be partitioned for privacy. Bosch saw the brick wall from the photos running the length of the space. He guessed that Stephen Jepson’s session on Friday had been with Lizbeth Grayson.

Bosch was staring at the wall when he remembered something that had been wrong about the conversation with Reineke. He turned and looked at the young script reader.

“Why did you ask if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke stuck out his lower lip and shook his head as he looked over at the doorway and then back to the counter.

“Did I? I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering.”

“Why would you wonder if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke did not look at him. The classic act of a liar.

“I don’t know. I was just guessing.”

“No, Louis, you were just lying. Why did you ask about IAD?”

“Look, man, I just was goofing. I was trying to think of something to ask.”

“Call the manager, Louis. Tell him he better get here for the three o’clock because you are going to the station with us. We’ll sit you down in a room for a while and when you’re finished goofing and want to tell us the truth, then we’ll talk.”

“No, man, I’ll lose my job here, man. I can’t go to the station now!”

Bosch made a move toward him.

“Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t owe the guy anything anyway.”

“What guy?”

Reineke shrugged off any further hesitation.

“The guys you asked about. They’re all one guy. He’s a cop.”

“A cop?” Bosch asked.

“I think so. He says he is. He takes photos for the police. All the crime scenes.”

“He told you this?”

“Yeah, he told me. He said that’s why he uses all the different names when he comes in. Because it’s like moonlighting and that’s not allowed. When you came in asking about all those names, I thought you were like Internal Affairs and you were onto him.”

Bosch looked over at Rider and then back at Reineke.

“Louis, call the manager. You still have to come to the station to look at photographs.”

“Ah, come on, man! I told you everything I know. I don’t even know the guy’s real name.”

“But you know his real face. Let’s go.”

Bosch took him by the arm and started to lead him toward the door to the counter. As they approached, Edgar stepped into the studio.

“About time,” Bosch said.

“Where’s the crime scene?” Edgar said.

“There is no crime scene,” Bosch said. “We’re taking Louis here back to the station to look at photos.”

“That’s weird.”

“What is?”

“I just passed Mark Baron, the crime scene guy, coming out of the elevator. He was in a hurry. I thought he was going to get his camera.”

They found police photographer Mark Baron in his apartment in West Hollywood. The door was unlocked and open two inches. Bosch called his name and then entered. Edgar and Rider were with him.

After overhearing Reineke tell Bosch and Edgar about the police photographer who used phony names to take Hollywood headshots of young women, Baron had rushed home, gone into the bedroom and gotten the gun he kept in a shoebox under his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put the muzzle into the fleshy spot under his chin. He pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.

Bosch didn’t look too long at the body of the dead photographer. Instead his eyes were drawn to the walls of the bedroom. Three of the four were covered floor to ceiling with collages of crime scene photos. All were of dead women. Next to each photo of death was a photo of life. The same woman alive and posing for him.

“Oh my God,” Rider murmured. “How long was he doing this?”

Bosch scanned the room and all of the photos of all of the different women. He didn’t want to guess.

“I better call this in to the captain,” Edgar said.

He left the room. Bosch continued to look. Finally, he found the headshot photo of Lizbeth Grayson on the wall. A photo of her lying dead on the bed was taped to the wall next to it.

Bosch wondered which of the photos Baron had prized the most. Dead or alive?

“I better call my office and tell them where I’m at,” Rider said.

Bosch nodded his approval. She left the room then and only Bosch remained.

“Do you still want to be a detective?” he asked, though he knew she was gone.

Cielo Azul

On the way up, the car’s air conditioner gave up shortly after Bakersfield. It was September and hot as I pushed through the middle of the state. Pretty soon I could feel my shirt start to stick to the vinyl seat. I pulled off my tie and unbuttoned my collar. I didn’t know why I had put a tie on in the first place. I wasn’t on the clock and I wasn’t going anywhere that required a tie.

I tried to ignore the heat and concentrate on how I would try to handle Seguin. But that was like the heat. I knew there was no way to handle him. Somehow it had always been the other way around. Seguin had the handle on me. One way or the other that would end on this trip.

I turned my wrist on the steering wheel and checked the date on my Timex. Exactly ten years since the day I had met Seguin. Since I had looked into the cold green eyes of the killer and known I was looking into the abyss.

The case began on Mulholland Drive, the winding snake of a road that follows the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. A group of high schoolers had pulled off the road to drink their beer and look down upon the smoggy City of Dreams. One of them spotted the body. Nestled in the mountain brush and the debris of beer cans and tequila bottles tossed down by past revelers, the girl was nude, her arms and legs stretched outward in some sort of grotesque display of sex and murder.

The call came to me, Detective Harry Bosch, and my partner, Frankie Sheehan. At the time, we worked out of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division.

The crime scene was treacherous. The body was snagged on an incline with a better than sixty-degree grade. One slip and a person could tumble all the way down the mountainside, maybe end up in somebody’s hot tub down below or on somebody’s concrete patio. We wore jumpsuits and leather harnesses and were lowered down to the body by firemen from the 58th Battalion.

The scene was clean. No clothes, no ID, no physical evidence, no clues but the dead girl. We didn’t even find any fibers that were going to be useful. This was unusual for a homicide.

I studied the girl closely and put her age at fifteen but no older. Mexican, or of Mexican descent, she had brown hair, brown eyes and a dark complexion. I could tell that in life she had been beautiful to look at. In death she was heartbreaking. She had been strangled, the indentations of her killer’s thumbs clear on her neck, the petechial hemorrhaging putting a murderous rouge around her eyes. Rigor mortis had come and gone. She was loose. That told us she had been dead more than twenty-four hours.

The guess was that she had been dumped the night before, under cover of darkness. That meant she had been lying dead somewhere else for twelve hours or more. That other place was the true crime scene. It was the place we needed to find.

When I turned the car inland toward the bay the air finally began to cool. I skirted the east side of the bay up to Oakland and then went across the bridge into San Francisco. Before crossing the Golden Gate I stopped for a hamburger at the Balboa Bar & Grill. I get to San Francisco two or three times a year on cases. I always eat at the Balboa. This time I ate at the bar, glancing occasionally up at the television to see the Giants playing in Chicago. They were losing.

But mostly I rolled the old case back and forth in my head. It was a closed case now and Seguin would never hurt another person again. Except himself. His last victim would be himself. But still the case stuck with me. A killer was caught, tried and convicted, and now stood to be executed for his crimes. But there was still an unanswered question that stuck with me. It was what put me on the road to San Quentin on my day off.

They called it the Little Girl Lost case in the newspaper. It was because we didn’t know her name. Fingerprints from the body matched no prints contained in computerized records. The girl matched no description on an active missing persons case anywhere in Los Angeles County or in national crime databases. An artist’s rendering of the victim’s face put on the TV news and in the papers brought no calls from a loved one or an acquaintance. Sketches faxed to five hundred police agencies across the southwest and to the State Judicial Police in Mexico drew no responses. The victim remained unclaimed and unidentified, her body reposing in the refrigerator at the coroner’s office while Sheehan and I worked the case.

It was tough. Most cases start with the victim. Who that person was and where she lived become the center of the wheel, the grounding point. Everything comes from the center. But we didn’t have that and we didn’t have the true crime scene. We had nothing and we were going nowhere fast.

All that changed with Teresa Corazon. She was the deputy coroner assigned to the case officially known as Jane Doe #90-91. While preparing the body for an autopsy she came across the lead that would take us first to McCaleb and then to Seguin.

Corazon found that the victim’s body had apparently been washed with an industrial-strength cleaner before being discarded on the hillside. It was an attempt by the killer to destroy trace evidence. This in itself, however, was both a clue and trace evidence. The cleaning agent could help lead to the killer’s identity or help tie him to the crime.

However, it was another discovery made by Corazon that turned the case for us. While photographing the body the deputy coroner noticed an impression in the skin on the rear left hip. Postmortem lividity indicated the blood in the body had settled on the left half, meaning the body had been lying on its left side in the time between the stilling of the heart and the dropping of the body down the hillside off Mulholland. The evidence indicated that during the time that the blood settled, the body had been lying on top of the object that left the impression on the hip.

Using angled light to study the impression, Corazon found that she could clearly see the number 1, the letter J and part of a third letter that could have been the upper left stem of an H, a K or an L.

“A license plate,” I said when she called me to the autopsy suite to view the discovery. “He put her down on a license plate.”

“Exactly,” said Corazon.

We formed the theory that whoever had killed the girl with no name had hidden the body in the trunk of a car until it was nighttime and safe to dump it. After carefully cleaning the body, the killer put it into the trunk of his car, mistakenly putting it down on part of a license plate that had been taken off the car and also placed in the trunk. That part of the theory was that the license plate had been removed and possibly replaced with a stolen plate as one more safety measure that would help the killer avoid detection if his car happened to be spotted by a suspicious passerby at the Mulholland overlook.

Though the skin impression gave no indication of what state issued the license plate, we decided to go with the percentages. From the state Department of Motor Vehicles we obtained a list of every car registered in Los Angeles County that carried a plate beginning 1JH, 1JK and 1JL.

The list contained over three thousand names of car owners. We then cut forty percent of those names by discounting the female owners. The remaining names were slowly fed into the National Crime Index computer and we came up with a list of forty-six men with criminal records ranging from minor to the extreme.

The first time I studied the list of forty-six, I knew. I felt certain that one of the names on it belonged to the killer of the girl with no name.

The Golden Gate lived up to its name in the afternoon sun. It was packed with cars going both ways and the tourist turnoff on the north side had the LOT FULL sign up. I kept moving, into the rainbow-painted tunnel and through the mountain. Soon enough I could see San Quentin up on the right. A foreboding-looking place in an idyllic spot, it housed the worst criminals California had to offer. And I was going to see the worst of the worst.

“Detective Bosch?”

I turned from the window where I had been looking down at the white stones of the veterans cemetery across Wilshire. A man in a white shirt and maroon tie stood holding open the door to the FBI offices. He looked like he was in his midthirties, with a lean build and healthy look about him. He was smiling.

“Terry McCaleb?”

“That’s me.”

We shook hands and he invited me back, leading me through a warren of wood-paneled hallways and offices until we came to his. It looked like it might have been a janitor’s closet at one time. It was smaller than a solitary-confinement cell and had just enough room for a desk and two chairs.

“Guess it’s a good thing my partner didn’t want to come,” I said, squeezing into the room.

Frankie Sheehan alternately referred to criminal profiling as “bureau bullshit” and “Quantico quackery.” When I had chosen a week earlier to contact McCaleb, the resident profiler in the bureau’s L.A. office, there had been an argument about it. But I was lead on the case; I made the call.

“Yeah, things are kind of tight here,” McCaleb said. “But at least I get a private space.”

“Most cops I know like being in a squad room. They like the camaraderie, I guess.”

McCaleb just nodded and said, “I like being alone.”

He pointed to the guest chair and I sat down. I noticed a photo of a young girl taped to the wall above his desk. She looked to be about the same age as my victim. I thought that if it was McCaleb’s daughter, maybe it would be a little plus for me. Something that would make him put a little extra drive into my case.

“She’s not my daughter,” McCaleb said. “She’s from an old case. A Florida case.”

I just looked at him. It wouldn’t be the last time he seemed to know my thoughts like I was saying them out loud.

“So, still no ID on yours, right?”

“No, nothing yet.”

“That always makes it tough.”

“So on your message you said you’d reviewed the file?”

“Yeah, I did.”

I had sent copies of the murder book and all crime scene photographs the week before. We had not videotaped the crime scene and this distressed McCaleb. But I had been able to get tape of the scene from a television reporter. His station’s chopper had been in the air over the crime scene but had not aired any footage because of the graphic nature of its contents.

McCaleb opened a file on his desk and referred to it before speaking.

“First of all, are you familiar with our VICAP program-Violent Criminal Apprehension?”

“I know what it is. This is the first time I ever submitted a case.”

“Yes, you’re a rarity in the LAPD. Most of you guys don’t want or trust the help. But a few more guys like you and maybe I can get a bigger office.”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell him that it was institutional distrust and suspicion that stopped most LAPD detectives from seeking the help of the bureau. It was an unspoken dictate that came from the police chief himself. It was said that the chief could be heard cursing loudly in his office every time news of an FBI arrest within city limits was reported. It was well known in the department that the bank robbery squad routinely monitored the radio transmissions of the bureau’s bank squad and often moved in on suspects before the feds got the chance.

“Yeah, well, I just want to clear the case,” I said. “I don’t really care if you’re a psychic or Santa Claus, if you’ve got something that will help me I’ll listen.”

“Well, I think maybe I do.”

He turned the page in the file and picked up a stack of crime scene photographs. These were not the photos I had sent him. These were 8x10 blowups of the original crime scene photos. He had made these on his own. It told me that McCaleb had certainly spent some time with the case. It made me think that maybe it had hooked him the way it had hooked me. A girl with no name left dead on the hillside. A girl no one had come forward to claim. A girl no one cared about.

In my secret heart I cared and I had claimed her. And now maybe McCaleb had, too.

“Let me just start with my overview of what I think you’ve got here,” McCaleb said.

He shuffled through the photos for a moment, ending with a still that had been made from the news video. It showed an aerial shot of the naked body, arms and legs stretched wide on the hillside. I took out my cigarettes and shook one out of the pack.

“You may have already arrived at these same conclusions. If so, I apologize. I don’t want to waste your time. By the way, you can’t smoke in here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, putting the smokes away. “What have you got?”

“Whether this is the actual murder site or not, this scene is very important in that it gives us an avenue to the killer’s thinking. What I see here suggests the work of what we call an exhibition killer. In other words, this is a killer who wanted his crime to be seen-to be very public-and by virtue of this to instill horror and fear in the general population. From this reaction by the public he draws his gratification. He is somebody who reads the newspapers and watches the news for any information or update on the investigation. It is a way of keeping score. So when we find him, I think we will find newspaper clippings and maybe even videos containing television reports on the case. These will probably be in his bedroom because they would be useful to him in carrying out masturbatory fantasies.”

I noticed he had said we in reference to the case investigators but I didn’t react. McCaleb went on as if he were talking to himself and there were no one else in the office.

“A component of the exhibition killer’s fantasy is the duel. Exhibiting his crime to the public includes exhibiting it to the police. In effect, he is throwing down a challenge. He is saying, ‘I am better than you, smarter and more clever. Prove me wrong if you can. Catch me if you can.’ You see? He is dueling with you in the public media arena.”

“With me?”

“Yes, you. In this case in particular you appear to be the media front man. It is your name in the newspaper stories included in the file.”

“I’m lead on the case. I’ve been the one talking to the reporters.”

McCaleb nodded again.

“Okay,” I said. “All this is good in terms of understanding what a nut this guy is. But what do you have that will help point us to the right guy?”

McCaleb nodded.

“You know how the Realtors say, location, location, location? It’s the same with me. The place he chose to leave her is significant in that it plays into his exhibitionistic tendencies. You have the Hollywood Hills here. You have Mulholland Drive and the view of the city. This girl was not dropped here randomly. This place was chosen, perhaps just as carefully as she was chosen as a victim. The conclusion is that the drop site is a place our killer may be familiar with because of the routines of his life, but nonetheless was not chosen because of reasons of convenience. He chose this spot, he wanted this spot, because it was the best spot to announce his work to the world. It was part of the canvas. It means he could have come from a long distance to leave her there. He could have come a few blocks.”

I noticed the use of our, as in our killer. I knew if Frankie had come with me he would’ve blown a gasket by now. I let it go.

“Did you look at the list I gave you of the forty-six names?”

“Yes, I looked at everything. And I think your instincts are good. The two potential suspects you highlighted both fit the profile I constructed for this killing. Late twenties with a history of crimes of escalating nature.”

“The Woodland Hills janitor has routine access to industrial cleaners-we could match something to the cleaning agent used on the body. He’s the one we like best.”

McCaleb nodded but didn’t say anything. He seemed to be studying the photographs, which were now spread across the desk.

“You like the other guy, don’t you? The stage builder from Burbank.”

McCaleb turned and looked directly at me.

“Yeah, I like him better. His crimes, though minor, fall more into line with the sexual predator maturation models we have seen. I think when we talk to him we have to make sure we do it in his home. We’ll get a better feel for him. We’ll know.”

“We?”

“Yes. And we need to do it soon.”

He nodded to the photos covering his desk.

“This wasn’t a one-shot deal. Whoever he is, he’s going to do it again… if he hasn’t already.”

I had been responsible for many men going to San Quentin but I had never been there myself before. At the gate I showed ID and was given a printout with instructions that directed me to a fenced lot for law enforcement vehicles. At a nearby door marked LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL ONLY I was ushered through the great wall of the prison and my weapon was taken and locked in a gun vault. I was given a red plastic chit with the number 7 printed on it.

After my name was put into the computer and the prearranged clearances were noted, a guard who didn’t bother introducing himself walked me through an empty rec yard to a brick building that had darkened over time to a fireplace black. It was the death house, the place where Seguin would get the juice in one week’s time.

We moved through a mantrap and a metal detector and I was passed off to a new guard. He opened a solid steel door and pointed me down a hall.

“Last one on the right,” he said. “When you want out wave at one of the cameras. We’ll be watching.”

He left me there, closing the steel door with a thunderous bang that seemed to reverberate through my marrow.

Frankie Sheehan wasn’t happy about it but I was the lead and I made the call. I allowed McCaleb to come with us on the interviews. We started with Victor Seguin. He was first on McCaleb’s list, second on mine. But there was something about the intensity in McCaleb’s eyes and words that made me defer and go with Seguin first.

Seguin was a stage builder who lived on Screenland Drive in Burbank. It was a small house with a lot of woodwork you might expect to find in a carpenter’s house. It looked as though when Seguin wasn’t finding movie work he was home building handsome window boxes and planters for the house.

The Ford Taurus with the license plate number 1JK2LL4 was parked in the driveway. I put my hand on the hood as we walked up the driveway to the door. It was cold.

At 8 P.M., just as the light was leaving the sky, I knocked on the front door. Seguin answered in blue jeans and a T-shirt. No shoes. I saw his eyes go wide when he looked at me. He knew who I was before I held up the badge and said my name. I felt the cold finger of adrenaline slide down my backbone. I remembered what McCaleb had said about the killer tracking the police while they tracked him. I had been on TV talking about the case. I had been in the papers.

Giving nothing away, I calmly said, “Mr. Seguin, that’s your car in the driveway, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s mine. What about it? What’s going on?”

“We need to ask you about it, if you don’t mind. Can we come in for a few minutes?”

“Well, no, I’d first like to know what-”

“Thank you.”

I moved across the threshold, forcing him to step back. The others followed me in.

“Hey, wait a minute, what is this?”

We had worked it out before we’d arrived. The interview was mine to conduct. Frankie was second seat. McCaleb said he just wanted to observe. The living room was carpenter overkill. Built-in bookshelves on three walls. A wooden mantel that was too big for the room had been built around the small brick fireplace. A floor-to-ceiling television cabinet was built in place as a divider between the sitting area and what looked like a little office nook.

I nodded approvingly.

“Nice work. You get a lot of downtime with your work?”

Seguin reluctantly nodded.

“Did most of this when we had the strike a couple years ago.”

“What do you do?”

“Stage builder. Look, what is this about my car? You can’t just push your way in here like this. I have rights.”

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Seguin. We believe your car was possibly used in the commission of a serious crime.”

Seguin dropped into a soft chair positioned for best viewing of the television. I noticed that McCaleb was moving about the outer edges of the room, studying the books on the shelves and the various knickknacks displayed on the mantel and other surfaces. Sheehan sat down on the couch to Seguin’s left. He stared at him coldly, wordlessly.

“What crime?”

“A murder.”

I let that sink in. But it appeared to me that Seguin had recovered from his initial shock and was hardening. I had seen this before. He was going to try to ride it out.

“Does anyone drive your car besides you, Mr. Seguin?”

“Sometimes. If I loan it to somebody.”

“What about three weeks ago, August fifteenth, did you lend it to anybody?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to check. I don’t think I want to answer any more questions and I think I want you people to leave now.”

McCaleb slid into the seat to Seguin’s right. I remained standing. I looked at McCaleb and he nodded slightly and only once. But I knew what he was telling me: he’s the guy.

I looked at my partner. Frankie had missed the sign from McCaleb because he had not taken his eyes off Seguin. I had to make a call. Go with McCaleb’s signal or back out. I looked at McCaleb again. He looked up at me, his eyes as intense as any I had ever seen.

I signaled Seguin to stand up.

“Mr. Seguin, I need you to stand up for me. I am placing you under arrest on suspicion of murder.”

Seguin slowly came to his feet and then made a sudden move toward the door. But Sheehan was ready for it and was all over him and had his face down in the carpet before he had gotten three feet. Frankie pulled his arms behind his back and cuffed them. I then helped him pull Seguin to his feet and we walked him out to the car, leaving McCaleb behind.

Frankie stayed with the suspect. As soon as I could, I came back inside. I found McCaleb still sitting in the chair.

“What was it?”

McCaleb reached out his arm to the nearest bookshelf.

“This is his reading chair,” he said.

He pulled a book off the shelf.

“And this is his favorite book.”

The book was badly worn, its spine cracked and its pages weathered by repeated readings. As McCaleb thumbed the pages, I could see paragraphs and sentences had been underlined by hand. I reached over and closed the book so I could read the cover. It was called The Collector.

“Ever read it?” McCaleb asked.

“No. What is it?”

“It’s about a guy who abducts women. He collects them. Keeps them in his house, in the basement.”

I nodded.

“Terry, we need to back out of here and get a search warrant. I want to do this right.”

“So do I.”

Seguin was sitting on the bed in his cell, staring at a chessboard set up on the toilet. He didn’t look up when I came to the bars, though I could tell my shadow had fallen across the game board.

“Who are you playing?” I asked.

“Somebody who died sixty-five years ago. They put his best moment-this game-in a book. And he lives on. He’s eternal.”

He looked up at me then, his eyes still the same-cold, green killer’s eyes-in a body turned pasty and weak from ten years in small, windowless rooms.

“Detective Bosch. I wasn’t expecting you until next week.”

I shook my head.

“I’m not coming next week.”

“You don’t want to see the show? To see the glory of the righteous?”

“Doesn’t do it for me. Back when they used the gas, maybe that’d be worth seeing. But watching some asshole on a massage table get the needle and then drift off to never-never land? Nah. I’m going to go see the Dodgers play the Giants.”

Seguin stood up and approached the bars. I remembered the hours we had spent in the interrogation room, close like this. The body was worn but not the eyes. They were unchanged. Those eyes were the signature of all the evil I had ever known.

“Then, what is it that brings you to me here today, Detective?”

He smiled at me, his teeth yellowed, his gums as gray as the walls. I knew then that the trip had been a mistake. I knew then that he would not give me what I wanted.

Two hours after we put Seguin in the car, two other detectives from RHD arrived with a signed search warrant for the house and car. Because we were in the city of Burbank, I had routinely notified the local authorities of our presence and a Burbank detective team and two patrol officers arrived on scene. While the patrol officers kept a vigil on Seguin, the rest of us began the search.

We spread out. The house had no basement. McCaleb and I took the master bedroom and Terry immediately noticed wheels had been attached to the legs of the bed. He dropped to his knees, pushed the bed aside and there was a trapdoor in the wood floor. There was a padlock on it.

While McCaleb left the room to look for the key, I took my picks out of my wallet and worked the lock. I was alone in the room. As I fumbled with the lock, I banged it against the metal hasp and I thought I heard a noise from beyond the door in response. It was far away and muffled but to me it was the sound of terror in someone’s voice. My insides seized with my own terror and hope.

I worked the lock with all my skill and in another thirty seconds it came open.

“Got it! Terry, I got it!”

McCaleb came rushing back into the room and we pulled open the door, revealing a sheet of plywood below with finger latches at the four corners. We raised this next, and there beneath the floor was a young girl. She was blindfolded and gagged and her hands were shackled behind her back. She was naked beneath a dirty pink blanket.

But she was alive. She turned and pushed herself into the soundproofing padding that lined the coffinlike box. It was as if she were trying to get away. I realized then that she thought the opening of the door meant he was coming back to her. Seguin.

“It’s okay,” McCaleb said. “We’re here to help.”

McCaleb reached down into the box and gently touched her shoulder. She startled like an animal but then calmed. McCaleb then lay down flat on the floor and reached into the box to start removing the blindfold and gag.

“Harry, get an ambulance.”

I stood up and stepped back from the scene. I felt my chest growing tight, a clarity of thought coming over me. In all my years I had spoken for the dead many times. I had avenged the dead. I was at home with the dead. But I had never so clearly had a part in pulling someone away from the outstretched hands of death. And in that moment I knew we had done just that. And I knew that whatever happened afterward and wherever my life took me, I would always have this moment, that it would be a light that could lead me out of the darkest of tunnels.

“Harry, what are you doing? Get an ambulance.”

I looked at him.

“Yeah, right away.”

I stepped closer to the bars and looked in at him.

“You’re running out of time. You’ve exhausted your appeals, you’ve got a governor who needs to show he’s tough on crime. This is it, Victor. A week from today you take the needle.”

I waited for a reaction but there was nothing. He just looked at me and waited for what he knew I would ask.

“Time to come clean. Tell me who she was. Tell me where you took her from.”

He moved closer to the bars, close enough for me to smell the decay in his breath. I didn’t back away.

“All these years, Bosch. All these years and you still need to know. Why is that?”

“I just need to.”

“You and McCaleb.”

“What about him?”

“Oh, he came to see me, too.”

I knew McCaleb was out of the life. The job had taken his heart. He got a transplant and last I’d heard he lived on a boat with a fishing line in the water.

“When did he come?”

“A few months ago. Dropped by for a chat. Said he was in the neighborhood. He wanted to know the same thing. Who was the girl, where did she come from? He told me you even gave her a name back then, during the trial. Cielo Azul. That’s really very pretty, Detective Bosch.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes, standing right where you are standing.”

“Are you going to tell me or not?”

He smiled and stepped back from the bars. He walked over to the chessboard and looked down at it as if he were considering a move.

“You know, they used to let me keep a cat in here. I miss that cat.”

He picked up one of the game pieces but then hesitated and returned it to the same spot. He turned and looked at me.

“You know what I think? I think that you two can’t stand the thought of that girl not having a name, not coming from a home with a mommy and a daddy and a little baby brother. The idea of no one caring and no one missing her, it leaves you hollow, doesn’t it?”

“I just want to close the case.”

“Oh, but it is closed. You’re not here because of any case. You are here on your own. Admit it, Detective. Just as McCaleb came on his own. The idea of that pretty little girl-and by the way, if you thought she was beautiful in death, then you should have seen her before-the idea of her lying unclaimed in an unmarked grave all this time undercuts everything you do, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a loose end. I don’t like loose ends.”

“It’s more than that, Detective. I know.”

I said nothing. I wanted to leave. The idea I had of getting him to tell me seemed absurd now.

“If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?”

He smiled broadly.

“If a girl is murdered in the city and nobody cares, does it matter?”

“I care.”

“Exactly.”

He came back to the bars.

“And you need me to relieve you of that burden by giving you a name, a mommy and daddy who care.”

He was a foot away from me. I could reach through the bars and grab his throat if I wanted to. But that would’ve been what he wanted me to do.

“Well, I won’t release you, Detective. You put me in this cage. I put you in that one.”

He stepped back and pointed at me. I looked down and realized both my hands were tightly gripping the steel bars of the cage. My cage.

I looked back up at him and his smile was back, as guiltless as a baby’s.

“Funny, isn’t it? I remember that day-ten years ago today. Sitting in the back of the car while you cops played hero. So full of yourselves for saving the girl. Bet you never thought it would come to this, did you? You saved one but you lost the other.”

I lowered my head to the bars.

“Seguin, you’re going to burn. You are going to hell.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I hear it’s a dry heat.”

He laughed loudly and I looked at him.

“Don’t you know, Detective? You have to believe in heaven to believe in hell.”

I abruptly turned from the bars and headed back toward the steel door. Above it I saw the mounted camera. I made an open-the-door gesture with my hand and picked up my speed as I got closer. I needed to get out of there.

I heard Seguin’s voice echoing off the walls behind me.

“I’ll keep her close, Bosch! I’ll keep her right here with me! Eternally together! Eternally mine!”

When I got to the steel door, I hit it with both fists until I heard the electronic lock snap and the guard began to slide it open.

“All right, man, all right. What’s the hurry?”

“Just get me out of here,” I said as I pushed past him.

I could still hear Seguin’s voice echoing from the death house as I crossed back across the open field.

One-Dollar Jackpot

The call came in after the usual killing hours. Bosch checked the clock as he rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. It was 5:45 A.M. and that was late for a murder call.

It was Lieutenant Larry Gandle with the news.

“Harry, you and Ignacio are up. Pacific is turning over a case to us. Female, thirty-eight years of age, name of Tracey Blitzstein. She got shot to death this morning in her car. One in the head. She was parked in her own driveway.”

The name sounded slightly familiar but Bosch couldn’t immediately place it.

“Who is she and why are we getting it?”

“She’s sort of a TV star. She plays poker. Uses the name Tracey Blitz. Her husband plays, too, I’m told. So if you watch that sort of thing on cable, then you’ve probably seen her a few times. She gets profiled. They use her on the commercials. She was good-looking and apparently the best thing the female species had to offer in the arena of professional poker.”

Bosch nodded. He only watched poker on TV when he had insomnia and the World Series of Poker reruns were on ESPN. He knew it was very popular. But all that wasn’t why he knew the name Tracey Blitz. Years earlier the name came up from time to time with his ex-wife, who also played poker for a living. Eleanor Wish, his ex, had always called the world of professional poker a men’s club and maintained that no woman would ever win the World Series. She said a woman named Tracey Blitz had the skills and reads to win poker’s greatest tournament but the men would simply never allow it. They would subconsciously pool their testosterone, if needed, and gang up and eliminate her if she ever got to the final table. It was about dominance of the species, Eleanor Wish said.

Now Tracey Blitz would never get the chance to win the big one. She had been eliminated from competition in a different and more permanent manner.

Bosch asked Gandle for the location of the crime scene and was given an address in Venice on the canals.

“What else, Lieutenant?” Bosch asked. “We got any witnesses?”

“Not yet-we’re not even an hour into this. I’m told the husband was home asleep. He woke up and came out and found her in the car. He saw no suspect or getaway vehicle.”

“Where is the husband?”

“I told them to take him downtown to Parker Center.”

“Who is he? You said he’s a player, too?”

“Yeah, just not at the same level as his wife. His name is David Blitzstein.”

Bosch thought about things, his mind becoming sharper as he left sleep behind and concentrated on what he was being told.

“Is it just going to be me and Ignacio?” he asked, referring to his partner.

“You guys are lead. I’ll bring in Reggie Sauer and he can coordinate from Parker Center and baby-sit the husband till you get in there. You also have the Pacific team for as long as you need them.”

Bosch nodded. That wouldn’t be much help. Usually when divisional detectives were replaced by Homicide Special, there was resentment. It was hard to get them to hang in and help.

“You got any names from Pacific?”

“Just one.”

Gandle gave him the name and cell number of the lead Pacific Division detective who had gotten the first callout at 5:01 that morning. Bosch was impressed that decisions were made quickly and he was now on the case less than an hour into it. That was a good sign. He told the lieutenant he would be in touch as the case progressed and then hung up. He immediately called Ignacio Ferras, woke him from a sound sleep and got him moving. Ferras lived more than an hour from Venice and Bosch told him to waste no time.

He then called the Pacific detective whose name Gandle had given him. Kimber Gunn picked up the call quickly and Bosch identified himself and explained he had just been tapped to take over her case. He apologized but said he was just following orders. The transfer of the case wasn’t news to Gunn but Bosch always liked to tread lightly in such situations. He had never worked with Gunn before and she surprised him. She offered her help and said she was awaiting his direction.

“I could use the help,” Bosch responded. “I’m probably a half hour from the crime scene and my partner lives out in Diamond Bar. He’ll be even longer.”

“Diamond Bar? You might want to redirect him. He’s closer to Commerce than to Venice.”

“Commerce? Why Commerce?”

“According to the vic’s husband, she spent the night playing poker at the card casino in Commerce. He said she called when she was leaving and told him she had won big.”

“Did he say how much?”

“He said she won more than six thousand dollars cash. My partner and I, well…”

“Well, what?”

“We don’t want to jump your case but we were thinking that it looks a lot like a follow home from the casino.”

Bosch thought about that for a few seconds before responding.

“Tell you what, let me call my partner and send him that way, then I’ll get right back to you.”

He closed the phone and called Ferras, who had not left his home yet. Bosch told him what he had just learned and instructed him to drive to the casino in Commerce and begin his part of the investigation there. He then called Gunn back.

“What else did the victim’s husband say, Detective Gunn?”

“He said he fell back asleep after she called. He then woke up when she pulled into the driveway-she’s got a tricked-out Mustang with glass pipes. It makes some noise. He was lying in bed and he heard her kill the engine but then she never came inside the house. He waited a few minutes and then went out to check. He found her in the car, dead. He didn’t see anybody and didn’t see any vehicles. That was it. You can call me Kim, by the way.”

“Okay, Kim. Anybody put the husband through the box?”

“My partner. No record.”

“What about ATF?”

“We checked that, too. He owns no firearms. Neither did she.”

Bosch was holding the phone in the crook of his neck while buttoning his shirt.

“Anybody swab him?”

“You mean GSR? We figured that was a call you should make. The husband’s cooperating. We didn’t want to mess with that.”

She was right in waiting for Bosch to make the call. Conducting a gunshot residue test to determine if a person had fired a weapon had become trickier and stickier in recent years. It was in a legal gray area and choices made now by detectives would be questioned and reviewed repeatedly down the line by supervisors, reporters, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and juries.

The issue at hand was that such testing put the subject on clear notice that he was a suspect. Therefore, he should be treated as a suspect-advised of his constitutional rights and given the opportunity to seek legal counsel. This put a chilling effect on cooperation.

Additionally, a recent directive from the District Attorney’s Office concluded that GSR testing was an invasive evidence-gathering technique that should only come voluntarily or after a search warrant had been approved by a judge, another move that would clearly put an individual on notice that he was a suspect. So gone were the days when a detective could casually tell an individual of interest to submit to GSR testing as a routine part of an investigation. A GSR test was now an indisputable means of tagging someone as it.

As Gunn had explained, David Blitzstein was cooperative at the moment. It was too early in the investigation to tag him as it.

“Okay, we’ll hold that till later,” Bosch said. “Where’s your partner?”

“He’s driving Blitzstein downtown. He’ll come back after.”

“What’s his name?”

“Glenn Simmons.”

Bosch didn’t know him. So far he didn’t know anybody on the case and that was a rub. So much of the work came down to personalities and relationships. It always helped to already know people.

“Forensics at the scene yet?” he asked.

“They just rolled in. I’ll keep an eye on things till you’re here.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was now 6 A.M. and he knew his promise of being there in a half hour was a stretch. He’d have to stop on the way to get coffee.

“Better yet,” he said, “why don’t you knock on doors before we start losing people to work and school and the day. See if anybody saw or heard anything.”

He almost heard her nod over the phone.

“I’ve got a number of the neighbors already standing in the street here watching,” Gunn said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to scare up some wits.”

“Good,” Bosch said. “I’ll see you soon.”

The crime scene was already a hive of activity by the time Bosch got there. He parked half a block down the street and as he approached on foot he got his bearings. He realized that the houses on the left side of the street backed up against one of the Venice canals, while those on the right, smaller and older, did not. This resulted in the houses on the left being quite a bit more valuable than those on the right. It created an economic division on the same street. The residents on the left had money, their houses newer, bigger and in better condition than those right across the street. The house where Tracey Blitzstein had lived was one of the canal houses. As he approached the glowing lights set up by forensics around a black hardtop Mustang, a woman stepped away from the gathering and approached him. She wore navy slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. She had a badge clipped to her belt and introduced herself as Kim Gunn. Bosch handed her the extra coffee he had brought and she was almost gleeful about receiving it. She seemed very young to be a homicide detective, even in a divisional squad. This told Bosch that she was good at it or politically connected-or both.

“You’ve got to be a cop’s kid,” Bosch said.

“Why’s that?”

“I was told your full name is Kimber Gunn. Only a cop would name a kid that.”

She smiled and nodded. Kimber was the name of a company that manufactured firearms, in particular the tactical pistols used by specialty squads in law enforcement.

“You got me,” she said. “My father was in LAPD SWAT in the seventies. But I got it better than he did. His name is Tommy Gunn.”

Bosch nodded. He remembered the name from when he first came on the department and was in patrol.

“I heard of him back then. I didn’t know him, though.”

“Well, I’ve heard of you. So I guess that makes us even.”

“You’ve heard of me?”

“From my friend Kiz Rider. We go to BPO meetings together.”

Bosch nodded. Rider was his former partner, now working out of the office of the chief of police. She was also recently elected president of the Black Peace Officers Association, a group that monitored the racial equality of hiring and firing as well as promotions and demotions in the department.

“I miss working with her and I don’t say that about too many people,” Bosch said.

“Well, she says the same about you. You want to take a look at the crime scene now?”

“Yes, I do.”

They started walking toward the lights and the waiting Mustang.

“Did you get anything from the neighbors yet?” Bosch asked.

Gunn nodded.

“No shortage of witnesses,” she said. “When David Blitzstein started yelling in the street, he woke up the neighborhood. I had the best of the lot taken to the station to give formal statements.”

“Anybody hear the gun?”

“Uh-uh.”

Bosch stopped and looked at her.

“Nobody?”

“Nobody we’ve found-and that includes Blitzstein himself. I’ve been up and down the street and nobody heard a gunshot. Everybody heard the guy screaming and plenty of them looked out their windows and saw him standing in the street. Nobody heard or saw a gun. Nobody heard or saw the getaway vehicle, either.”

“You mean if there was one.”

“If there was one.”

Bosch started back toward the Mustang but then stopped again.

“What was your take on the husband?” he asked.

“Like I said, he’s been nothing but cooperative so far. You thinking the husband?”

“At the moment I’m thinking everybody. What was this guy wearing when he was in the middle of the street yelling for help?”

“Blue jeans. No shirt, no shoes.”

“Any blood on him?”

“Not that I saw.”

Bosch’s phone buzzed. It was his partner.

“Harry, I’ve been talking to the manager of the card room. He said Tracey Blitz won a lot of money last night.”

“How much is a lot?”

“She cashed in sixty-four hundred in chips.”

That jibed with what David Blitzstein had told Kimber Gunn.

“Do they have cameras in the parking lot?” Bosch asked.

“Hold on.”

Ferras put his hand over the phone and Bosch heard a muffled back-and-forth conversation. Then Ferras came back on the line.

“There are cameras,” Ferras reported. “He’s going to let me see if she was followed out of the lot.”

“Good. Let me know.”

Bosch hung up.

“That was my partner at the casino,” he told Gunn. “He confirmed she won sixty-four hundred dollars last night. He’ll check the cameras to see if she was followed when she left.”

Gunn nodded.

“Let’s go take a look at the victim,” Bosch said.

Bosch silently studied the murder scene for several minutes, trying to take in the nuances of motivation. Tracey Blitzstein had a contact wound on the left side of her head just above the ear. There was an explosive exit wound encompassing much of her upper right cheek. Her body sat behind the steering wheel of the Mustang, held in place by the seat belt and shoulder strap. She was killed before she had made a move to get out of the car.

Her small clutch purse was lying unzipped on her lap. Her head was turned slightly to the right and down, her chin on her chest. There were blood spatters and brain material on the dashboard, steering wheel and passenger seat and door. But little blood had dripped from the wounds down onto her clothes or purse. Death had come instantly, the heart getting no chance to pump blood from the wounds.

Bosch noted that the Mustang’s windows were all intact. He believed that this meant that the fatal shot had been fired through the driver’s open door. Bosch drove a Mustang himself. He knew that when the car’s transmission was placed in drive, the doors automatically locked. This meant that the shooter didn’t open the door. The victim did. She had likely stopped the car, killed the engine and then opened the door to get out before taking off the seat belt. It was when she opened the door that the killer approached, most likely from behind the car, and fired the fatal shot into her brain from a position slightly behind her. She probably never saw her killer or knew what was coming.

Bosch noticed a yellow evidence marker on the passenger-side door. There was a padded armrest with a hole in it. The yellow tags were used to mark locations of ballistic evidence. He knew that the slug that had killed Tracey Blitzstein had been stopped by the car door.

Bosch saw another yellow marker on the front hood of the car. It marked the location of a bullet casing that had been found in the crack between the hood and the car’s front right fender. It was most likely the shell ejected from the killer’s gun. Bullet casings were usually ejected from the gun’s chamber in an arc to the right rear of the weapon. This was by design because almost all automatics were manufactured for right-handed shooters and a right-rear ejection arc would take the casing away from the shooter.

But a shell could easily be redirected forward after rebounding off another object. And if a left-hander was firing the weapon, that object could be the shooter himself. Bosch was left-handed and had personal experience with this-one time a red-hot shell had hit him in the eye after being ejected during range practice. He knew that, depending on the shooter’s stance and how the weapon was held, there was a possibility in this case that the ejected shell hit the shooter and then caromed forward-perhaps to land on the front hood of the car the killer had just fired into.

Bosch nodded to himself. He had a hunch that he was looking for a left-handed gun.

“What is it?” Gunn asked.

“Nothing yet. Just a theory.”

An assistant coroner named Puneet Pram was working the scene along with a forensics team from the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division. While some coroners kept up a running commentary of what they were doing and seeing at a crime scene, Pram was a very quiet worker. Bosch had been at murder scenes with him before and knew that he would not be getting a lot from him until the autopsy. Donald Dussein, the head of the forensics team, was another matter. He was a known character in the department. Known by a variety of nicknames ranging from Donald Duck to D-Squared, he was usually overly forthcoming-to the point of bending facts into theory and confusing his role at a crime scene. Bosch had worked with him as well and knew he would have to rein him in and keep him on point.

And it wasn’t long into Dussein’s initial briefing that Bosch had to do just that.

“Couple things first,” Dussein said. “The contact wound to the head. Neat and very clean. Too clean if you ask me.”

“All right, then, I’m asking you,” Bosch said. “What do you mean by ‘too clean’?”

“Well, Harry, I’ve seen a lot of these in my time. And this has the look of a hitter’s work. I’m talking about a contract killer. You have the illicit world of gambling and money in which this victim traversed and then a hit like this and it all adds-”

“Hold on a second there, Double D. How about you stick to forensics and we’ll do the detective work, okay? I need facts from you, not theories. Now, what about the contact wound is too clean for you? What are you trying to say?”

Chastened, Dussein nodded.

“The burn pattern is too small,” he said. “You see, normally, you put the muzzle up to the side of somebody’s head and pull the trigger, you get a three-to-five-inch burn in the hair and on the skin. The hot gases coming out of the barrel spread and burn. You follow?”

“We follow,” Bosch said.

“Okay, well, we’ve got no burn here. We’ve got a contact wound but we’ve got no burn. No gases and you know what that means.”

Bosch nodded. He did know. It meant that the weapon used to kill Tracey Blitzstein was likely equipped with a sound suppressor-a silencer that would have rechanneled the sound of the shot. In doing so it would have rechanneled the explosion of hot gases as well. It would have sent them backward through the baffles of the snap-on device toward the shooter, leaving the victim’s hair unburned except in the immediate area of the wound.

“It would explain why none of the witnesses heard the shot,” Bosch said.

Dussein nodded.

“What are you saying, the shooter used a silencer?” Gunn asked.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Dussein said.

He gestured toward the body.

“There is no burn. This is a contact wound with no burn. I’m telling you, the shooter used a suppressor.”

Bosch nodded. He decided it might be best to move on to the rest of the review.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s talk about ballistics.”

Dussein nodded, ready to move on.

“We got lucky there,” he said. “The slug impacted in the padding of the door and we recovered it in good shape. We also have the casing recovered from the front of the vehicle. A forty-caliber federal. Between the slug and the shell we will be able to match it to a weapon. You just need to find the weapon.”

Bosch nodded.

“I’m wondering how the shell ended up on the front hood,” he said.

“That’s a good question,” Dussein said. “You want to hear my theory?”

“How about I tell you mine?”

Bosch moved to the open door of the Mustang and reached in with his left hand, stopping a half foot from the victim’s head.

“I’m thinking the shooter was possibly left-handed. In this position the shell could have bounced off his body and then ricocheted forward over the roof to the front hood.”

“My theory exactly.”

Dussein beamed. Bosch just nodded.

“What about the purse?” he asked. “Can we have that yet?”

“Give me five more minutes and then it’s yours,” Dussein replied.

Bosch nodded again and stepped back away from the car. He signaled Gunn outside the grouping so they could confer privately.

“Tell me again what the witnesses said about the husband when they saw him in the street?”

“They said he was in the middle of the street, screaming for help, yelling things like call the cops and call for an ambulance. The man who lives across the street was the next on scene and checked on the victim. He saw that there was no hope and took the husband back over to his place. He was sitting on the porch with him when police arrived on scene.”

Gunn pointed across the street to the old craftsman with a porch running its entire length.

“The neighbor gave him some clothes, too,” she added. “A T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Blitzstein never went back into his own house before we shipped him downtown.”

“Okay, good. Let’s just make sure nobody goes into the house until we get a search warrant.”

He looked around the crime scene. Gunn took a step closer and spoke in a lower voice.

“You really like him for this, don’t you? The husband. I wish I knew what I was missing.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I don’t know. You’re probably not missing anything. Things just don’t seem right to me. Do you know if David Blitzstein is left-handed or right-handed?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to call my partner? He’s probably still delivering him. He could ask.”

“No, that would tip him off. Let that go for now. Until we…”

He didn’t finish. Until we what? He didn’t know yet.

“What doesn’t seem right about the scene?” Gunn said, pressing him. “Teach me something.”

“Just a feeling, that’s all. The door was locked on that car when she pulled in. I know, I have a Mustang and the doors automatically lock.”

“Okay, it was locked, but she opened it.”

Bosch shook his head.

“That’s what I don’t see. I know this kind of woman. I was married to one. Someone like her, somebody who moves in a man’s world, somebody who plays cards all night and wins big… somebody who knows the dangers that comes with all of that… I don’t see her swinging that door open before she takes off the seat belt. She wouldn’t open that door until she was ready to move.”

Gunn digested Bosch’s ramble and nodded.

“But she would open it for someone she trusted,” she said.

Bosch pointed a finger at her like a gun and nodded his head.

“Only one problem with that scenario,” she said. “Where’s the gun? I’ve got about a dozen witnesses who saw Blitzstein in the middle of the street in his blue jeans and nothing else.”

Bosch was ready for that argument.

“The gun could be anywhere. It could be in the house or the canal behind the house. It doesn’t matter because the gun and the gunshot do not set the time of the killing. The witnesses didn’t look out their windows because they heard a shot. They looked because Blitzstein was out there screaming in the street.”

Bosch saw recognition flare in Gunn’s eyes.

“You’re saying he had time to get rid of the gun because nobody knows how long it was between when she was capped with the silencer and when he went into the street and started waking up the neighborhood.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s the other thing. Him going into the street and yelling for help-like he wanted the neighbors to see him. I don’t know, if that was my wife in that car with her brains all over the place… I don’t think I’d end up in the middle of the street with no blood on me. I don’t see that at all.”

His phone buzzed and he started digging it out of his pocket.

“See if Dussein’s done with the purse,” he said. “I’ve got a guy at Parker Center waiting to go to work. I’ll get him on the search warrant for the house.”

“You got it.”

Bosch opened his phone. It was Ignacio Ferras.

“Harry, I’ve looked at all the tapes from the casino’s entrance area and the parking lot. It looks to me like she had a follower.”

Bosch felt a sudden pause. A follower would completely contradict the theory he had just spun with Gunn.

“Are you sure, Ignacio?”

“Well, nothing’s for sure but I have her on tape leaving the casino with a security escort. The guy walked her out to her car. He then stood in the lot until she pulled out. Everything was copacetic. But then in thirty-second intervals two more cars pulled out and headed in the same direction she did. Toward the freeway entrance down the block.”

“Two cars…”

“Yeah, two.”

“Okay, but aren’t cars pulling in and out of there at a regular clip? Even in the middle of the night? And probably most of the cars that leave go to the freeway, right?”

“Yeah, they do. At all hours-the casino’s open twenty-four hours. But after I saw these two cars follow her out, I went back through the tapes to trace the drivers. I found one of them came out a couple minutes before the victim. He got in his car and took a little time before pulling out. I think he was smoking. That allowed the victim to leave first.”

“Okay, and what about the second car?”

“That’s the thing, Harry. I couldn’t find anybody walking out of the casino that connects with that car. Not at first. So I had to go all the way back an hour to find the guy. He left an hour before the victim and he sat out there in his car waiting for her.”

Bosch started to pace in the street as all of this registered.

“Did you also look at the tapes from inside the casino with this guy?” he asked.

“I did. And the guy wasn’t playing, Harry. He was just watching. He was walking around, acting like he was a player but he never actually played. He was watching the tables and in the last hour he was watching her play. The victim. He zeroed in on her, then he left and waited for her in the parking lot.”

Bosch nodded slowly. He was seeing the case turning completely in a new direction. Kimber Gunn walked up to him then but he held up a finger so he could finish the call.

“Ignacio, did you get plates off the cars that left after Tracey Blitzstein?”

“Yeah, we got the plates on the tape. The first car was registered to a Douglas Pennington of Beverly Hills. The second car’s registered to a Charles Turnbull of Hollywood.”

Beverly Hills and Hollywood were on the west side, same as Venice. If Pennington and Turnbull were heading home from the casino in Commerce, they would have gone in the same direction as Tracey Blitzstein. That was explainable-at least as far as Pennington went. But Turnbull’s activity in the casino and then his waiting in the parking lot for an hour wasn’t-yet.

“And you put them through the box?” Bosch asked his partner.

“Yeah, both clean. I mean, Turnbull’s got a lot of parking and moving violations but that’s it.”

Bosch looked into Gunn’s eyes while he tried to think about what to do. Her eyebrows were raised. He could tell she sensed a change in the winds of the investigation.

“Harry, what do you want me to do?” Ferras asked.

“Head to Parker Center. I’m going to put Sauer on a search warrant for the victim’s house. Hopefully he’ll have it signed and ready to go by the time you get there. Pick it up and come out here to the scene. We’ll figure out things then.”

“What about Turnbull?”

“Give me his address. I’m going to take a run by there now.”

After he finished the call and hung up, Gunn spoke first.

“I checked the purse. The money’s gone. What’s happening?”

“You have a company car here?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a piece-of-shit cruiser from the barn at Pacific.”

“Good. You drive. I’ll tell you what’s happening on the way. Everything I just told you-that we talked about-it all just went down the tubes.”

The address Ferras had given Bosch for the home of Charles Turnbull led to a brick apartment building on Franklin. On the way there Bosch filled Gunn in on what Ferras had come up with at the casino in Commerce.

They had no background on Turnbull other than what Ferras had given them but when they got to the entrance to the apartment building, another new dimension was added. Next to the button for apartment 4B it said Turnbull Investigations. Before pushing the button, Bosch called Jim Sauer at Parker Center and asked him to run the name Charles Turnbull through the state corporations and licensing computer. A few minutes later he hung up.

“He’s held a PI license for sixteen years,” he told Gunn. “Before that he was a Santa Monica cop.”

Bosch pushed the button next to Turnbull Investigations. After getting no response he pushed it two more times, each time longer than the time before. He had opened his phone again and was asking directory assistance for a number for Turnbull when a sleepy and annoyed voice sounded from the speaker above the entrance buttons.

“Whaaat is it?”

Bosch stepped close to the speaker.

“Mr. Turnbull?”

“What? It’s eight o’clock in the morning!”

“LAPD, Mr. Turnbull. We need to speak to you.”

“About what?”

“It’s an emergency situation, sir, involving one of your clients. Can we come up?”

“Which client?”

“Can we come up?”

There was no response for five seconds and then there was a buzzing sound and the entrance door was electronically unlocked. They took the elevator up to the fourth floor and on the way Bosch unsnapped the safety strap on his holster. Gunn did the same.

“That a Kimber?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, the Ultra Carry.”

Bosch nodded. It was the same weapon he carried.

“Good gun. Never jams.”

“I hope we don’t have to find out.”

When they stepped out of the elevator, there was a man standing in the hallway in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. He wore a ragged bathrobe over the ensemble, which hid much of his belt line and anything he might have hidden in it. He was in bare feet and his dark brown hair was sticking straight up on one side. He had been asleep.

“Turnbull?” Bosch asked, while using his right hand to show the man his badge.

“What’s this about?” the man asked.

“Not in the hallway. Can we come in, Mr. Turnbull?”

“Whatever.”

He pointed them toward the open door to apartment B but Bosch signaled him to go in first. Bosch wanted to keep Turnbull in front of him and in sight at all times.

“Have a seat if you can find a spot,” Turnbull said as they entered. “Coffee?”

“I could use some,” Bosch said.

“Thank you,” said Gunn.

They both remained standing. The apartment had furnishings of a contemporary design but it was cluttered with Turnbull’s work. There were files stacked on the coffee table and spread on a couch. It was clear that the living room was the nexus of his practice.

Bosch followed him to the kitchen alcove, again so he could keep a visual on him. Turnbull spoke as he filled a glass coffeepot with water.

“Which client is in the shit?” Turnbull asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You said there was an emergency. So which client is in the shit?”

Bosch decided to roll with things.

“David Blitzstein,” he said.

Turnbull was about to pour the water into the coffee brewer but paused with the glass pot held above it. He shook his head.

“Don’t know that name,” he said. “Not my client.”

“Really? You were working for him last night,” Bosch said.

Turnbull smiled.

“You’ve got your facts wrong, Detective.”

Turnbull poured the water into the brewer and set the glass pot underneath it.

“You own a weapon, Mr. Turnbull? You know I can find out with one phone call.”

“You probably already have. Yes, I own a weapon but I almost never carry it. It’s ancient. From my days with the cops. A thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson. A wheel gun. No cop would use one today.”

A revolver. No ejection of shells. It was the wrong caliber and wrong kind of gun for the Blitzstein killing.

“We’ll check to make sure. You want to show it to me?”

Turnbull leaned back against a counter in the kitchen and folded his arms in a gesture of frustration.

“Sure, I’ll show it to you, just as soon as the bank down the street opens up at nine because it’s in a safe-deposit box. Like I told you, I rarely use the thing. Now, you guys are either seriously running down the wrong alley or I am missing something right in front of my face. I don’t know any David Blitzstein. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bosch instinctively believed him. He also believed that something was wrong. They were indeed down the wrong alley. He decided to try the direct approach.

“All right, let’s stop dancing. You were at the casino in Commerce last night. Why?”

Turnbull raised his eyebrows. It was the first thing that made sense to him.

“I was working. But not for or against David Blitzstein.”

“Then let’s start with who hired you.”

“A lawyer named Robert Suggs. I do a lot of work for him. He’s a divorce lawyer.”

“All right, then, what were you doing?”

“I was watching an individual for another individual, a client of Bob Suggs.”

Bosch nodded that he understood.

“Mr. Turnbull. I think we have made a mistake here but we need to be sure. The individual you were watching, what was his name?”

“I would have to call Suggs before I could reveal that.”

“Was it Douglas Pennington of Brentwood?”

Bosch saw the tell in Turnbull’s eyes. The name was familiar to him.

“I can’t say,” Turnbull said.

“You just did,” Bosch said. “Look, I understand your position. I spent two years working a private ticket myself and I know how that is. But we’re working a homicide here. So let’s find a middle ground where you can help us and help yourself by being done with us. Let’s forget names. We’ll go with individuals. Tell us what you can about the case you were working last night.”

Coffee started dripping into the pot and its smell began to pervade the apartment. It kicked off a craving in Bosch. The charge from his first cup of the day was dead and gone.

“An individual hired my employer to begin the marital dissolution process. Only this individual’s husband doesn’t know about it yet. We’re in what we call the hunting-and-gathering stage. She tells us that she thinks her husband’s got a girlfriend on the side. Once or twice a week he stays out almost all night, telling her he’s playing poker. She’s noticed that the bank account has been dropping eight to ten grand a month with withdrawals he has made.”

“So you were tailing him last night,” Bosch said.

Turnbull nodded

“That’s correct.”

“And it turned out he actually was playing poker.”

“Correct again.”

“How much did he lose?”

“About two grand. He played at a high-stakes table and a woman cleaned him out. In a way, the wife turned out to be right. He gave his money to another woman.”

Turnbull smiled and then snapped his fingers and pointed at Bosch.

“Blitz. I heard the woman who was cleaning up at that table called Blitz. Is she the homicide?”

He turned toward a cabinet but kept his eyes on Bosch. He opened it and pulled out three cups. He set them on the counter next to the coffeemaker.

“Yeah, she’s the one,” Bosch said.

“She left at the same time as my guy and so the cameras in the parking lot gave you the idea that I was tailing her, not him.”

“Something like that.”

Turnbull hit a switch on the brewer and pulled out the glass pot. He poured three cups and asked if anybody wanted sugar or powdered cream. There were no takers.

“Of course,” he said. “You’re cops.”

Bosch drank from the cup he was given and the coffee was strong and hot, just like he wanted it. He relaxed a bit. Turnbull was a dead end as far as being a suspect but he could still be useful as a witness.

“You went out to the parking lot about an hour ahead of your subject,” he said. “How come?”

“Because I was tired of acting like I belonged in there. I had to start playing or I had to get out of there. I don’t play poker. No interest. So I went out and sat on his car.”

“See anything unusual out there?”

“No, just people coming and going.”

“What about the woman when she came out? Did you see her?”

“I saw her. My guy had already come out and he was sitting in his car smoking and trying to cool down after dropping all that money. So then she came out with a security guy. I thought that was a good move. She was probably carrying a lot of dough after the way she was playing. She was cleaning everybody out. Not just my guy.”

Bosch nodded.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I was watching because my guy was in his car and thought maybe if there was something going on, I was going to see it right there. But she got in her car and left. Then my guy left and I followed him.”

“Nothing else with her in the parking lot.”

“Not in the parking lot, no.”

“Meaning…?”

“Well, I don’t know if it means anything at all. But I was on the job once, a long, long time ago, and I know you guys want everything about everything. So I’ll give you everything. On the freeway she almost lost control of her car.”

“How so?”

“I’m not really sure but I think she was doing something, maybe she dropped something or she was reaching for something, and it made her swerve out of her lane and then back into it. She looked like she was drunk-driving but she wasn’t drunk. When I was watching her in the card room she was drinking bottled water only.”

“Was it a cell phone? Was she looking down while driving?”

“I don’t think so. Not a cell phone. I probably would have seen the light. Anyway, when she swerved I was right behind her so I lit her up with my brights to see if she was all right. I didn’t see any phone. She was sort of bent over like she had dropped something down by the bottom of the door. She sat up when I hit her with the brights. She looked back at me in the rearview and I turned them off.”

Bosch thought about this for a few minutes, wondering what Tracey Blitzstein had been doing. He then realized that maybe she had made the same mistake he had just made, mistaking Turnbull for a follower, and was hiding the money she had won under the seat as a precaution against robbery.

“Do you think she saw you leaving the casino lot?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She could have.”

“Is there a chance she could have thought you were following her? Or a chance that she thought the guy you were following was following her?”

Turnbull drank some coffee and thought over his answer before voicing it.

“If she thought anybody was following her, it would have been me. We were all going the same way but my guy got ahead of her. So if she was checking the mirrors, she would have seen me. If I had won that kind of money, I would’ve been checking my mirrors.”

Bosch nodded and thought about everything for a few moments.

“When exactly did she make that swerve between the lanes?” he then asked.

“Almost as soon as we got up on the freeway. Like I said, my guy got ahead of the both of us. So I dropped behind her and was kind of using her car to shield myself from my guy-in case he was watching the mirrors. So she easily might’ve thought I was on her instead of him.”

Turnbull poured more coffee into his cup and then offered the glass pot to Bosch and Gunn but both passed on the refill.

“I just remembered something,” Turnbull said. “Something that goes with her thinking I was following her.”

“What was it?” Bosch asked.

“About ten minutes after she did the swerve, she kind of made an evasive maneuver. At the time I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep and almost missed her exit, but now I see it. She was trying to see if she had a tail.”

“What exactly did she do?”

“We were on the ten going west, right? Well, we were coming up on La Cienega, and at the last moment she all of a sudden cut across two lanes to go down the exit.”

“You mean like she was trying to see if somebody would follow her down the ramp?”

“Yeah, like if I would make the same cut across the freeway as her. It was a good move. It would reveal a tail or lose a tail, either way.”

Bosch nodded and looked at Gunn to see if she had anything to add or ask but she remained silent.

“Did you see her again after that?” Bosch asked.

“No, not after that,” Turnbull said. “She was gone in the night.”

In more ways than one, Bosch thought. He ended the interview. He needed to get away from Turnbull to make a call.

“Mr. Turnbull, we’re sorry to have gotten you up after you worked all night,” he said. “But you’ve helped us and we appreciate it.”

Turnbull raised his hands like his efforts were minimal.

“I’m just glad I’m no longer a suspect,” Turnbull said. “Good luck catching the bad guy.”

Bosch put his empty cup on the counter.

“Thanks for the coffee, too.”

Bosch pulled his phone as soon as they were out of the building and heading back to the car. He called his partner.

“It’s me,” he said. “Are you at the scene yet?”

“Just got here. I’ve got the search warrant for the house.”

“Good. But before you go in, I want you to get with Dussein, the forensics guy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him to pull the interior of the Mustang apart if he has to but I think the missing money is still in it somewhere.”

“You mean it wasn’t a follow home?”

“I don’t know what it was yet but when she was driving home I think she thought she was being followed. I think she hid the money in the car somewhere, somewhere within reach while driving. Maybe just under the seat but I would assume Dussein already looked there.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Call me back if you get something.”

Bosch closed the phone. He didn’t speak until they were back in her car.

“I think we’re back to the husband,” he said. “What Turnbull told us reinforces the theory. If she was scared or thought she might’ve been followed, she wouldn’t have swung the door open until she was ready to make a quick move to the house. She thought it was safe.”

Gunn nodded.

“I forgot to tell you something about the purse,” she said.

“The victim’s purse? What about it?”

“She had a small can of pepper spray in it. She never took it out.”

Bosch thought about this for a moment and saw how it fit with the current theory.

“Again, if she thought she had been followed, and even if she believed she had lost the follower with her maneuver on the freeway, she wouldn’t have opened that door and left the pepper spray in her purse unless she felt safe.”

“Unless someone was there to make her feel safe.”

“Her husband. Maybe he was holding the gun in plain sight and she thought it was for her protection. She opened the door and he turned it on her.”

Gunn nodded like she believed the scenario but then she played devil’s advocate.

“But we can’t prove any of that. We don’t have anything. No gun, no motive. Even if we find the money in the car, it’s not going to matter. It doesn’t preclude a follow home and we won’t be able to charge him.”

“Then it’s an eight-by-eight case.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means it’s going to come down to what happens in that eight-by-eight room at Parker Center. We go talk to him and wait for him to make a mistake.”

“He’s a professional poker player, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

It took them half an hour to get from Hollywood to Parker Center downtown because of the morning rush hour. In the third-floor Robbery-Homicide Division office Bosch watched David Blitzstein through one-way glass for five minutes as he readied himself for the interview. Blitzstein didn’t look like a man mourning the murder of his wife. He reminded Bosch more of a caged tiger. He was pacing. There was little space for this with the table and two chairs taking up most of the interview room but Blitzstein was moving from one wall to the opposite wall, repeatedly going back and forth. Each time his pattern brought him within inches of the one-way glass-mirrored on his side-and each time that he stared into his own eyes he was also unknowingly staring into Bosch’s eyes on the other side.

“Okay,” Bosch finally said. “I’m ready.”

He handed his cell phone to Gunn.

“Keep this. If my partner calls with news, come in and say the captain’s on the phone.”

“Got it.”

They went into the detective bureau and Bosch filled two foam cups with coffee. He put four packs of sugar into one and took them both to the interview room. He entered and put the oversweetened coffee down on one side of the table in the center while he sat on the other side with the other.

“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Blitzstein,” he said. “Have some coffee. It’s going to be a long day for you.”

Blitzstein came over and sat down.

“Thank you,” he said. “Who are you? What’s going on with my wife?”

“My name’s Harry Bosch. I’ve been assigned as lead detective on your wife’s case. I am very sorry for your loss. I am sorry to keep you waiting but hope to get you out of here as soon as possible so that you can be with your family and begin to make arrangements for your wife.”

Blitzstein nodded his thanks. He picked up his coffee cup and sipped from it. His face soured at the taste but he didn’t complain. This was good. Bosch wanted him to keep drinking. He was hoping to push him into a sugar rush. People often mistook a sugar high for clarity of thought. Bosch knew the truth was that the rush made them take chances and they made mistakes.

Blitzstein put the cup down and Bosch noticed he had used his left hand. There was the first mistake.

“I just need to go over things once more before we get you out of here,” Bosch said.

“I told everything I know to that black girl.”

“You mean Detective Gunn? Well, that was sort of preliminary. Before I was assigned. I need to hear some things for myself. Plus we now have the advantage of having studied the crime scene and talked to the witnesses.”

Blitzstein’s eyebrows shot up momentarily and he tried to cover by bringing the cup up and gulping down more coffee. But Bosch now had one of his tells and he registered it accordingly.

“Wow, that’s hot!” he exclaimed. “You mean there are witnesses?”

“We’ll get to the witnesses in a few minutes,” Bosch said. “First I want to hear your version of events again. This way I have it directly from you instead of secondhand through Detective Gunn. This way it’s not colored by anything anybody else has said or claimed to have seen.”

“What do you mean, ‘claimed to have seen’?”

“Just a turn of phrase, Mr. Blitzstein,” Bosch said.

Blitzstein blew out his breath in exasperation and started recounting the same story he had told Gunn four hours earlier. He threw in no new details and left nothing out from his first accounting. This was unusual. True stories evolve as details are remembered and others are forgotten. A false story, one that has been rehearsed in the mind, usually remains constant. Bosch knew all of this and felt his suspicion of Blitzstein was moving onto more solid ground.

“So how soon were you to the car after the shot?”

“I don’t know because I didn’t hear it. But I don’t think it was too long. I had heard her pull in. I waited and when she didn’t come into the house, I went out to see what was wrong.”

“So if somebody said they thought you were already at the car when the shot was fired, would they be wrong?”

“What? Right at the-no way, I wasn’t right there when the shot was fired. I didn’t even see who did it. What are you trying to say?”

Bosch shook his head.

“I’m not trying to say anything. I’m trying to get as clear a picture of what happened as I can. As you can imagine, we get conflicting views. People say different things. I had a partner once who said if you put twenty people in a room and a naked man ran through it, you’d get twelve people who would say he was white, seven who would say he was black and at least one who would claim it was a woman.”

Blitzstein didn’t even smile.

“Tell you what,” Bosch said. “Why don’t you tell me your theory of what happened out there?”

Blitzstein didn’t even have to think about it.

“Simple. She was followed home. She won a lot of money and somebody from that casino followed her home and killed her for it.”

Bosch nodded like it all fit.

“How do you know that she won a lot of money?”

“Because she told me when she called me from the cage to tell me she was coming home.”

“What cage?”

“The cash cage. She was cashing in her chips and they let her use the phone because she’s a regular. She forgot her cell phone last night. She called me and said she was driving home.”

“Was she scared carrying all of that cash?”

“Not really. She won more often than she lost and knew to take precautions.”

“Did she carry a weapon?”

“No. Actually-I think she had like a little can of mace in her purse.”

Bosch nodded.

“We found that. But that’s it, just the pepper spray?”

“Far as I know.”

“Okay, then what about you? Did you play down there? Did you ever go with her?”

“I used to. But not in about a year.”

“How come?”

“I’m sort of banned from that casino. There was a misunderstanding last year.”

Bosch drank some more coffee and wondered if he should pursue this or if it was a misdirection Blitzstein was hoping he would pursue. He decided to proceed with caution.

“What was the misunderstanding?”

“It’s got nothing to do with this.”

“If it has to do with that card room in Commerce, then it does have something to do with this. If you want to help me find your wife’s killer, then you have to answer my questions and let me decide what matters and what is important. What was the misunderstanding?”

“All right, I’ll tell you if you have to know. They accused me of cheating and there’s nothing I could do to defend myself. I wasn’t cheating and it’s their interpretation against my word. End of story. They kicked me out and won’t let me back in. Banned for life.”

“But they didn’t have a problem with your wife still coming?”

Blitzstein shook his head angrily.

“Of course not. She’s a draw, man. She brings business in over there. When she’s playing, you get all these guys coming out of the woodwork to play against the girl from the world series and the ESPN commercials. They all want to kick her ass. It’s a guy thing. It’s like marking their turf, coming in her face. It’s the same with all the women on the tour.”

Bosch was silent for a moment. This was no misdirection by Blitzstein. Bosch was beginning to see at least part of the motivation for murder. Blitzstein knew that if the murder of his wife-a well-liked and well-known player-was attributed to a follow home from the casino in Commerce, then the card room would take a major public-relations hit that could impact its business and reputation. As if on cue, Blitzstein’s bile boiled up and added further to Bosch’s understanding of the crime.

“You know what?” he said. “If this thing turns out that somebody followed her home, I am going to sue their asses over there. It will be the biggest goddamn jackpot I ever rake in.”

Bosch simply nodded, hoping Blitzstein would say more. But he may have realized he had already said too much. He turned quiet and Bosch started off in a new direction.

“How would you describe your relationship with your wife?”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, were you happy with each other, was it getting boring, were you upset that she was a poker celebrity and you weren’t?”

Bosch stared pointedly at him while he said the last part. Blitzstein reacted immediately.

“We were fine. We were still in love and I didn’t give a shit about who was a celebrity and who wasn’t. You know what poker comes down to? Twenty percent skill and eighty percent luck. Some people are more skilled than others but luck is always the thing.”

Again Bosch waited a few moments to see if he would say more but he didn’t. Bosch continued.

“All right, so the card room in Commerce is off-limits. Where then do you play? The Hustler or the card room at the Hollywood track?”

“Nope, I don’t play anywhere. They’re all together on this. You get banned one place and they put your picture on the wall everyplace else. It’s fucking unconstitutional but nothing I can do anything about.”

“So you play private games?”

“When I can get them, yeah. Meantime, I was my wife’s manager.”

Bosch thought about his ex-wife and the stories she told about private games, the personal items, car keys and guns that would sometimes go into the pots.

“You ever win anything besides money at those private games?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My ex-wife is a player-you might even know her. Eleanor Wish?”

Blitzstein hesitated and then nodded.

“Yeah, I remember her. I think Tracey told me she was in Hong Kong or Macau these days. I was even thinking of heading over there to check out the casinos.”

Bosch saw an opening and went for it.

“When did you start thinking about that?”

“What?”

“Moving to Hong Kong or Macau.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, man. I said I was thinking of going over there to check it out, not move there. Why would I think of moving there?”

“Because you were banned here. Did the ban extend to Las Vegas? Maybe you were thinking of pulling up stakes.”

“Look, man, it’s none of your business. I wasn’t thinking about moving anywhere. We have a house here and I was happy. A lot of things were happening for Trace and I was managing her career. I don’t need to defend myself to you.”

Bosch raised his hands in a back-off gesture.

“You certainly don’t. Anyway, back to what I was asking about. Yes, my wife does play in Macau. She likes it. She used to tell me about these private games she played when she was over here. She said you could win anything sometimes. It was like owning a pawnshop. People would throw in jewelry, cars, guns. You ever won any stuff like that?”

Blitzstein looked at Bosch for a long moment, his eyes going through a slow burn from cold to hot.

“Fuck you, Detective Bosch. I want a lawyer.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong except for you trying to fuck me in the ass. I want a goddamn phone and I want to call a lawyer.”

Bosch leaned back in his seat.

“You know once you say that we’re done, I can’t talk to you and I can’t help you. You sure you want-”

“Help me? Yeah, help me into a prison cell for something I didn’t do. Fuck you. Get me the phone. We’re done here.”

Bosch drummed his fingers on the table for a moment and then nodded.

“All right, we’ll do it your way. I’ll go get you the phone.”

He slowly got up, giving Blitzstein a last chance to change his mind, and then left the room when he didn’t.

Gunn met him in the hallway.

“Well, you got close,” she said. “You convinced me-or rather, he convinced me-but I still don’t think we have enough to charge him.”

“Maybe not. Has my partner called?”

“Oh, shit! Your phone! Where is it? I… I think I left it out there on your desk when we got the coffee.”

They walked out to the squad room and Bosch grabbed his phone. He’d missed three calls from Ferras while he was in the interview room with Blitzstein. He quickly called back.

“Harry, where you been?”

“In an interview. You got something?”

“Jackpot, man. We got it all.”

“Tell me.”

“You were right. The driver-side door has a secret compartment. The armrest unsnaps from the door and opens up. The latch was hidden behind the speaker grille in the door.”

“What did you find?”

“We found the money, the gun, a workout shirt and gloves. It’s all there. The gun’s got a suppressor on it, too. A homemade job. There was also a bracelet in the compartment she must’ve put in there. It’s from when she won a qualifying tournament for the World Series of Poker in oh-four.”

Bosch looked at Gunn. He was annoyed. It was all information he could’ve used before Blitzstein shut things down and called for a lawyer. He turned away and went back to Ferras.

“Did you run the gun yet?”

“Yeah, just did. It’s a dead end. It was reported stolen nine months ago by the original owner in Long Beach. A gun dealer named Kermit Lodge. Said it was stolen off a table at a gun show in Pomona.”

Bosch knew it wasn’t a dead end. If they found a link between the gun’s original owner and Blitzstein, then the dead end could become an integral piece of evidence. But that was for later. He asked Ferras about the workout shirt and the gloves.

“It’s a long-sleeved plastic pullover. You know, for like sweating and losing weight.”

“And the gloves?”

“Just your basic work gloves. They look new. There’s blowback on the shirt and the gloves. The thing is, Harry, the shooter knew about the secret compartment. He shot her then dumped the gun, the shirt and the gloves in the compartment. The husband, Harry. He shot her, hid everything in the compartment and then started calling for help.”

“Yeah, now we just have to prove it. He just lawyered up.”

Ferras didn’t respond and in the silence Bosch thought of something. One last thing to attempt.

“What kind of work gloves are they? Leather, plastic, cotton?”

“Cotton.”

Bosch felt a small spark of hope. The gloves and the shirt had been worn by the killer so that he would avoid getting blowback-blood, brains and gunshot residue-on his body. But blowback came in all sizes-including microscopic-and cotton was porous.

“Okay, I want you to leave the scene,” Bosch said. “Go down to Long Beach and pick up the gun dealer. Bring him up here to RHD.”

“Pick him up for what?”

“Just tell him he reported the theft of a weapon and that we’ve recovered it and need him to come downtown to identify it. Keep him in the dark. Just get him down here.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Good.”

Bosch closed the phone.

“What did they get?” Gunn asked.

“Everything.”

He updated her on the phone call and she was immediately apologetic about forgetting about his phone. She knew he could have used the information about the secret compartment to press Blitzstein. It seemed obvious that he would have known about the compartment in his wife’s car, yet he never mentioned it when discussing the precautions she took.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bosch said. “It’s done.”

“Then what’s the next move?”

Bosch didn’t answer at first. He pulled his fold of cash out of his pocket. He had three one-dollar bills. He studied these and asked Gunn if she had any ones. She pulled out some cash and held out two ones.

Bosch chose one of Gunn’s dollars and gave her one of his in exchange. He then put the dollars in one pocket and returned his cash fold to the other.

“Okay,” he said. “Now we’ll see what kind of poker player David Blitzstein is.”

Bosch walked back into the interview room and put his cell phone down on the table in front of Blitzstein.

“There’s the phone,” he said. “But since you are calling an attorney, I need to read you your constitutional rights and make sure you have a full understanding of them. It’s procedure.”

“Then let’s get it on,” Blitzstein said. “I want to make the call.”

Bosch pulled out a business card and sat down at the interview table across from Blitzstein. The card had the rights advisory on the back side. He read it out loud, then had Blitzstein read it and sign it as well. He watched as the suspect signed it with his left hand.

Bosch pushed the phone across the table to him.

“Who you going to call?” Bosch asked.

This seemed to give Blitzstein pause.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know any criminal defense attorneys.”

Bosch looked up at the ceiling as if considering it.

“Let see… Johnnie Cochran’s dead. And Maury Swann’s in jail. There’s Dan Daly and Roger Mills. Those are good guys. There’s also Mickey Haller. I hear he’s back in business.”

“Haller. I’ve heard of him. He’s on the TV a lot, so he must be good.”

Bosch shrugged.

Blitzstein clicked a button on the phone and then punched in 411. He asked the directory assistance operator for Haller’s number. He then hung up without a thank-you and punched in Haller’s number. Someone answered and transferred him. There was a long silence before Blitzstein had the lawyer of his choice on the line. After a few minutes of short-sentence discussion he clicked off the phone.

“He’s on the way,” Blitzstein said. “He’ll get me out of here.”

“That shows a lot of confidence in somebody you’ve never met,” Bosch said.

“I have to have confidence in somebody. You people are trying to pin this on me.”

“We look for evidence and it takes us where it takes us. We aren’t looking to pin anything on anybody-unless they deserve it.”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, that’s all I’m saying. You asked for a lawyer and we can’t talk about the case anymore. Those are the rules.”

“Damn right. You can leave now.”

“Not quite. I have to stay with you until your lawyer gets here. Those are the rules, too. We’ve had a few people hurt themselves after we leave them alone. Then they try to blame us.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe I should pop myself in the eye and say you did it.”

“You try that and I’ll make sure you file the report from the hospital.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a long three minutes after that. Bosch studied Blitzstein and waited for the right moment. Finally, he began.

“You want more coffee?”

“No, it tasted like oil.”

Bosch nodded and let another thirty seconds go by.

“When did you start playing poker?”

Blitzstein shrugged.

“When I was a kid. My old man was a beer drunk who played with his drinking buddies in the garage a couple nights a week. I used to watch and he’d let me take his hand when he went to take a leak.”

“Starting early like that, you must’ve played a lot of games over the years.”

“Too many to remember.”

“I never played against my wife. Did you ever play against Tracey?”

“We tried to avoid it. Me and Trace knew each other too well. We knew the tells.”

Bosch nodded.

“I always wanted to go head-to-head against a pro,” he said. “What do you say?”

Blitzstein shook his head in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Bosch leaned forward across the table while pulling his money out of his pocket.

“You ever play liar’s poker?”

Blitzstein made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.

“Not since I was about thirteen.”

Bosch held up the bill he had traded Gunn for. He folded it in his hand so Blitzstein would be unable to read the serial number.

“Five sixes,” he said.

The object of liar’s poker was to predict the total number of specific letters or numbers in the serial numbers of all dollar bills in the game. If Blitzstein took the bait, it would be a total coming from only two bills. Five sixes was a high bid.

Blitzstein shook his head.

“I don’t play with amateurs.”

“With all those card rooms cutting you out, I would say that was all you had left to play with. Six sixes.”

“Jesus,” Blitzstein said in an exasperated tone.

“Come on, Mr. Pro. What’ve you got?”

“I’ve got an hour in this room with you and I think you’re going to drive me nuts.”

“Then I guess I win by default.”

Bosch started putting his money away. Blitzstein leaned forward.

“Just hold on, boy.”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cash. He found a dollar bill and crunched it in his fist.

“You bid six sixes? Then I call without even looking. I know you’re bluffing. You’ve got a major tell.”

“Yeah, what is that?”

“You look away at the precise moment you should stare unflinchingly at your opponent.”

“Is that right?”

Blitzstein dropped his bill on the table and Bosch did likewise. Bosch had five sixes in his serial number. He carefully opened Blitzstein’s bill and it had one six. Bosch took both bills off the table.

He held Blitzstein’s up and smiled.

“I’m going to frame this!”

He put it into his shirt pocket, shoved his winning dollar bill into his pants pocket and smiled.

“Now I can tell people I beat a poker pro.”

“Yeah, I hope it makes you happy.”

This time Bosch stared unflinchingly at his opponent. And he saw Blitzstein’s tell. A quick moment where his confidence deserted him and he wondered if he had just stepped into a trap.

“It does make me happy,” Bosch said. “Very happy.”

Bosch and Gunn walked into the forensics lab on the fourth floor and asked the counterwoman if a lab rat named Ronald Cantor was working. They were in luck. Cantor was in the lab and they were buzzed through the gate.

Cantor was an SEM jockey. His job was to analyze collected evidence with a scanning electron microscope. The normal wait time for this particular analysis ranged from four to six months. But there were unofficial ways around this. Lab rats were given morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. What they did on those breaks was up to them. It was personal time. If they wanted, for example, they could take cases out of order and put the evidence on the SEM lens. It was all about the incentives to do so.

Ronald Cantor had an ongoing incentive when it came to Bosch. Five years earlier Bosch had solved the murder of his nine-year-old niece, who had been snatched from her front yard in Laurel Canyon by a man who asked her for help finding a lost dog. Though devastated by the loss of the young girl, the Cantor family was always grateful to Bosch, primarily because not only did he solve the case but he also saved them the agony of going through a trial. During the killer’s capture, Bosch had shot the man to death in a struggle for control of Bosch’s gun. Ever since that day, Bosch was gold when it came to getting case time on the scanning electron microscope.

“Ronnie, how are you?” Bosch said as he approached.

“Doing good, Harry. This your new partner?”

“For the day, you could say. Detective Gunn, this is Ronnie Cantor, SEM expert. Have you taken your morning break yet, Ronnie?”

“No, just beginning to think about some hot chocolate, actually.”

“Well, I got a little thing here I was hoping you’d take a look at real quick. We got a guy down in one of our rooms and we need to pull the trigger on him in the next hour. Keep him or kick him loose. You could help us out while I go down and get the hot chocolate.”

Cantor swiveled on his stool away from the lab table where he was working and looked directly at Bosch.

“What have you got?” he asked.

With two fingers Bosch pulled Blitzstein’s dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and held it out.

“Shit,” Cantor said. “You’ve been carrying it in your pocket?”

“Just a couple minutes. It’s been in our suspect’s pocket and he just handled it. I’m looking for anything and everything. GSR, blood, anything. We think he killed his wife this morning but we’re having a hard time making the jump from thinking to knowing. He’s got a big-time lawyer heading our way as we speak.”

Cantor grabbed a pair of tweezers off the lab table and used them to take the dollar bill from Bosch.

“Can you do it?” Bosch urged.

“Yes, I can do it. But the prospect of contamination is very high.”

“It’s unofficial. If you find something, we’ll make the arrest and do it all over again according to protocol.”

“All right, then.”

“Good, Ronnie. I’ll go get the hot chocolate and be right back.”

Gunn offered to make the hot chocolate run but Bosch told her to stay in the lab and watch Cantor work. He said she might learn something. Going for hot chocolate wouldn’t teach her a thing.

Bosch was gone fifteen minutes, and when he came back with two black coffees and one hot chocolate, Cantor said he was finished analyzing the one-dollar bill.

He put the foam cup containing his drink off to the side and gave his report. He spoke without inflection, using the tone and words he employed when testifying in court.

“SEM analysis shows quantifiable amounts of primer, powder, projectile material and the products of their combustion. While the amounts identified in this analysis are low, I would be confident in testifying that the last person to handle this currency had recently discharged a firearm.”

Bosch felt a stab of excitement go through his chest. For a moment he visualized the scene of Tracey Blitzstein sitting dead in her car. He nodded to himself. Her killer wouldn’t get away with it.

“Thank you, Ronnie,” he said.

“I’m not finished,” Cantor said. “Further analysis reveals microscopic particles of blood in the material being examined as well.”

Bosch held up his coffee cup to Cantor.

“Cheers, man. We gotta go hook this guy up.”

Bosch and Gunn quickly left the lab. While they waited for the elevator, they talked about what needed to be done next. First, they would officially charge David Blitzstein with murder and put a no-bail hold on him. Mickey Haller would not be getting him out today. That was for sure. Second, they would seek another search warrant allowing them to use adhesive tape discs and chemically treated swabs to collect gunshot residue from the suspect’s hands and arm. They would additionally ask the judge to allow for a luminol test, which would reveal microscopic blood spatter on the suspect’s body as well.

Relief showed in their faces. They felt good about where things stood with Blitzstein. Less than four hours into the investigation they were about to make the arrest.

“That was smooth,” Gunn said. “You were smooth, Harry. Kiz Rider was right about you.”

“Yeah? What did she say?”

“She told me never to play poker with you.”

Bosch smiled. The elevator opened and they got on.

About the Author

Michael Connelly is the author of the recent #1 New York Times bestsellers The Fifth Witness, The Reversal, The Scarecrow, The Brass Verdict, and The Lincoln Lawyer, as well as the bestselling Harry Bosch series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.

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