“You want to help her? Go get them!”
Edgar turned Edgewood around and they both ran back toward the ramp.
Bosch turned back to Brasher. Her face was now the color of death. She was going into shock. Bosch didn’t understand. It was a shoulder wound. He suddenly wondered if he had heard two shots. Had the blast and echo obscured a second shot? He checked her body again but found nothing. He didn’t want to turn her to check her back for fear of causing more damage. But there was no blood coming from beneath her.
“Come on, hang in there, Julia. You can do it. You hear that? The paramedics are just about here. Just hang in there.”
She opened her mouth again, jutted her chin and started to speak.
“He . . . he grabbed . . . he went for . . .”
She clenched her teeth and rocked her head back and forth on his coat. She tried to talk again.
“It wasn’t . . . I’m not . . .”
Bosch leaned his face close to hers and lowered his voice to an urgent whisper.
“Shhhh, shhhh. Don’t talk. Just stay alive. Concentrate, Julia. Hold fast. Stay alive. Please, stay alive.”
He could feel the garage rumble with noise and vibration. In a moment red lights were bouncing off the walls and then a paramedic truck was pulling up next to them. A patrol cruiser was behind it and other uniformed officers, as well as Eyman and Leiby, were running down the ramp and flooding the garage.
“Oh God, oh please,” Stokes mumbled. “Don’t let it happen . . .”
The first paramedic reached them and the first thing he did was put a hand on Bosch’s shoulder and gently push him back. Bosch went willingly, realizing he was only complicating things now. As he moved backward away from Brasher, her right hand suddenly grasped his forearm and pulled him back toward her. Her voice was now as thin as paper.
“Harry, don’t let them—”
The paramedic put a breathing mask over her face and her words were lost.
“Officer, please get back,” the paramedic said firmly.
As Bosch crawled backward on hands and knees he reached over and gripped Brasher’s ankle for a moment and squeezed it.
“Julia, you’ll be all right.”
“Julia?” said the second paramedic as he crouched next to her with a large equipment case.
“Julia.”
“Okay, Julia,” the paramedic said. “I’m Eddie and that there’s Charlie. We’re going to fix you up here. Like your buddy just said, you’re going to be all right. But you gotta be tough for us. You gotta want it, Julia. You gotta fight.”
She said something that was garbled through the mask. Just one word but Bosch thought he recognized it. Numb.
The paramedics started stabilizing procedures, the one called Eddie talking to her all the while. Bosch got up and moved over to Stokes. He pulled him up into a standing position and pushed him away from the rescue scene.
“My ribs are broken,” Stokes complained. “I need the paramedics.”
“Trust me, Stokes, there’s nothing they can do about it. So just shut the fuck up.”
Two uniforms came up to them. Bosch recognized them from the other night when they had told Julia they would meet her at Boardner’s. Her friends.
“We’ll take him to the station for you.”
Bosch pushed Stokes past them without hesitation.
“No, I got him.”
“You need to stay here for OIS, Detective Bosch.”
They were right. The Officer Involved Shooting team would soon descend on the scene and Bosch would be questioned as a primary witness. But he wasn’t putting Stokes into any hands he did not explicitly trust.
He walked Stokes up the ramp toward the light.
“Listen, Stokes, you want to live?”
The younger man didn’t answer. He was walking with his upper body hunched forward because of the injury to his ribs. Bosch tapped him lightly in the spot Edgewood had kicked him. Stokes groaned loudly.
“Are you listening?” Bosch asked. “Do you want to stay alive?”
“Yes! I want to stay alive.”
“Then you listen to me. I’m going to put you in a room and you don’t talk to anybody but me. You understand that?”
“I understand. Just don’t let them hurt me. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what happened, man. She said get against the wall and I did what I was told. I swear to God all I did was—”
“Shut up!” Bosch ordered.
More cops were coming down the ramp and he just wanted to get Stokes out of there.
When they got to daylight, Bosch saw Edgar standing on the sidewalk talking on his cell phone and using his other hand to signal a transport ambulance into the parking garage. Bosch pushed Stokes toward him. As they approached, Edgar closed the phone.
“I just talked to the lieutenant. She’s on the way.”
“Great. Where’s your car?”
“Still at the car wash.”
“Go get it. We’re taking Stokes to the division.”
“Harry, we can’t just leave the scene of a—”
“You saw what Edgewood did. We need to get this shit-bag to a place of safety. Go get your car. If we get any shit for it, I’ll take it.”
“You got it.”
Edgar started running in the direction of the car wash.
Bosch saw a utility pole near the corner of the apartment building. He walked Stokes to it and recuffed him with his arms around it.
“Wait here,” he said.
He then stepped away and ran a hand through his hair.
“What the hell happened back there?”
He didn’t realize he had spoken out loud until Stokes started answering the question, stammering about him not doing anything wrong.
“Shut up,” Bosch said. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
32
BOSCH and Edgar walked Stokes through the squad room and down the short hallway leading to the interview rooms. They took him into room 3 and cuffed him to the steel ring bolted to the middle of the table.
“We’ll be back,” Bosch said.
“Hey, man, don’t leave me in here,” Stokes began. “They’ll come in here, man.”
“Nobody’s coming in but me,” Bosch said. “Just sit tight.”
They left the room and locked it. Bosch went to the homicide table. The squad room was completely empty. When a cop went down in the division everybody responded. It was part of keeping the faith in the blue religion. If it was you who went down, you’d want everybody coming. So you responded in kind.
Bosch needed a smoke, he needed time to think and he needed some answers. His mind was crowded with thoughts about Julia and her condition. But he knew it was out of his hands and the best way to control his thoughts was to concentrate on something still in his hands.
He knew he had little time before the OIS detail would pick up the trail and come for him and Stokes. He picked up the phone and called the watch office. Mankiewicz answered. He was probably the last cop in the station.
“What’s the latest?” Bosch asked. “How is she?”
“I don’t know. I hear it’s bad. Where are you?”
“In the squad. I’ve got the guy here.”
“Harry, what are you doing? OIS is all over this. You should be at the scene. Both of you.”
“Let’s just say I was fearful of a deteriorating situation. Listen, let me know the minute you hear something about Julia, okay?”
“You got it.”
Bosch was about to hang up when he remembered something.
“And Mank, listen. Your guy Edgewood tried to kick the shit out of the suspect. He was cuffed and on the ground at the time. He’s probably got four or five broken ribs.”
Bosch waited. Mankiewicz didn’t say anything.
“Your choice. I can go formal with it or I can let you take care of it your way.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“All right. Remember, let me know what you know.”
He hung up and looked at Edgar, who nodded his approval on the way Bosch was handling the Edgewood matter.
“What about Stokes?” Edgar said. “Harry, what the fuck happened in that garage?”
“I’m not sure. Listen, I’m going to go in there and talk to him about Arthur Delacroix, see what I can get before OIS storms the place and takes him away. When they get here, see if you can stall them.”
“Yeah, and this Saturday I’m planning to kick Tiger Woods’s ass on Riviera.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Bosch went into the rear hallway and was about to enter room 3 when he realized he had not gotten his recorder back from Detective Bradley of IAD. He wanted to record his interview with Stokes. He walked past the door to room 3 and stepped into the adjoining video room. He turned on the room 3 camera and auxiliary recorder and then went back to room 3.
Bosch sat across from Stokes. The life appeared drained from the younger man’s eyes. Less than an hour before he had been waxing a BMW, picking up a few bucks. Now he was looking at a return to prison—if he was lucky. He knew cop blood in the water brought out the blue sharks. Many were the suspects who were shot trying to escape or inexplicably hung themselves in rooms just like this. Or so it was explained to the reporters.
“Do yourself a big favor,” Bosch said. “Calm the fuck down and don’t do anything stupid. Don’t do anything with these people that gets you killed. You understand me?”
Stokes nodded.
Bosch saw the package of Marlboros in the breast pocket of Stokes’s jumpsuit. He reached across the table, causing Stokes to flinch.
“Relax.”
He took the pack of cigarettes and fired one up with a match from a book slipped behind the cellophane. From the corner of the room he pulled a small trash can next to his chair and dropped in the match.
“If I wanted to hurt you I would’ve done it in the garage. Thanks for the smoke.”
Bosch savored the smoke. It had been at least two months since he’d had a cigarette.
“Can I have one?” Stokes asked.
“No, you don’t deserve one. You don’t deserve shit. But I’m going to make a little deal with you here.”
Stokes raised his eyes to Bosch’s.
“You know that little kick in the ribs you got back there? I’ll trade you. You forget about it and take it like a man and I’ll forget about you spraying me in the face with that shit.”
“My ribs are broke, man.”
“My eyes still burn, man. That was a commercial cleaning chemical. The DA will be able to get assault on a police officer out of that faster than you can say five to ten in Corcoran. You remember being in the Cork, don’t you?”
Bosch let that sink in for a long moment.
“So do we have a deal?”
Stokes nodded but said, “What difference is it going to make? They’re going to say I shot her. I—”
“But I know you didn’t.”
Bosch saw a glimmer of hope returning to Stokes’s eyes.
“And I will tell them exactly what I saw.”
“Okay.”
Stokes’s voice was barely a whisper.
“So let’s start at the start. Why’d you run?”
Stokes shook his head.
“Because it’s what I do, man. I run. I’m a convict and you’re the Man. I run.”
Bosch realized that in all of the confusion and haste, nobody had searched Stokes. He told him to stand up, which could only be accomplished by Stokes leaning over the table because of his shackled wrists. Bosch moved around behind him and started checking his pockets.
“You got any needles?”
“No, man, no needles.”
“Good, I don’t want to get stuck. I get stuck and all deals are off.”
As he searched he held the cigarette in his lips. The smoke stung his already burning eyes. Bosch took out a wallet, a set of keys and roll of cash totaling $27 in ones. Stokes’s tips for the day. There was nothing else. If Stokes had been carrying drugs for sale or personal use, he had tossed them while trying to make his escape.
“They’ll be out there with dogs,” Bosch said. “If you tossed a stash, they’ll find it and there won’t be anything I can do about it.”
“I didn’t toss anything. If they find something, they planted it.”
“Yeah. Just like O.J.”
Bosch sat back down.
“What was the first thing I said to you? I said, ‘I just want to talk.’ It was the truth. All of this . . .”
Bosch made a sweeping gesture with his hands.
“It could have all been avoided if you had just listened.”
“Cops never want to talk. They always want something more.”
Bosch nodded. He had never been surprised by how accurate the street knowledge of ex-convicts was.
“Tell me about Arthur Delacroix.”
Confusion tightened Stokes’s eyes.
“What? Who?”
“Arthur Delacroix. Your skateboard buddy. From the Miracle Mile days. Remember?”
“Jesus, man, that was—”
“A long time ago. I know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“What about him? He’s long gone, man.”
“Tell me about him. Tell me about when he disappeared.”
Stokes looked down at his cuffed hands and slowly shook his head.
“That was a long time ago. I can’t remember that.”
“Try. Why did he disappear?”
“I don’t know. He just couldn’t take no more of the shit and ran away.”
“Did he tell you he was running away?”
“No, man, he just left. One day he was just gone. And I never saw him again.”
“What shit?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said he couldn’t take any more of the shit and ran away. That shit. What are you talking about?”
“Oh, you know, like all the shit in his life.”
“Did he have trouble at home?”
Stokes laughed. He mocked Bosch in an imitation.
“ ‘Did he have trouble at home?’ Like, who didn’t, man?”
“Was he abused—physically abused—at home? is what I mean.”
Again, laughter.
“Who wasn’t? My old man, he’d rather take a shot at me than talk to me about anything. When I was twelve he hit me from across the room with a full can of beer. Just because I ate a taco he wanted. They took me away from him for that.”
“You know, that’s a real shame, but we’re talking about Arthur Delacroix here. Did he ever tell you his father hit him?”
“He didn’t have to, man. I saw the bruises. The guy always had a black eye is what I remember.”
“That was from skateboarding. He fell a lot.”
Stokes shook his head.
“Fuck that, man. Artie was the best. That’s all he did. He was too good to get hurt.”
Bosch’s feet were flat on the floor. He could tell by the sudden vibrations through his soles that there were people in the squad room now. He reached over and pushed the button lock on the doorknob.
“You remember when he was in the hospital? He’d hurt his head. Did he tell you that it was from a skateboarding accident?”
Stokes knitted his brow and looked down. Bosch had jogged loose a direct memory. He could tell.
“I remember he had a shaved head and stitches like a fucking zipper. I can’t remember what he—”
Someone tried the door from the outside and then there was a harsh banging on the door. A muffled voice came through.
“Detective Bosch, this is Lieutenant Gilmore, OIS. Open the door.”
Stokes suddenly reared back, panic filling his eyes.
“No! Don’t let them—”
“Shut up!”
Bosch leaned across the table, grabbed Stokes by the collar and pulled him forward.
“Listen to me, this is important.”
There was another knock on the door.
“Are you saying that Arthur never told you his father hurt him?”