This time it was dark when Bosch reached the turnout for the northern overlook. The signs said the park was closed from dusk till dawn, but there were cars parked and people out on the promontory, checking out the vast carpet of lights in the Valley. Bosch stepped out to the view and looked to his right along the ridgeline. He could see the forward edge of the concrete house jutting farther out than the houses between it and the overlook. Bosch saw lights on behind floor-to-ceiling windows, and far down the sheer hillside at the bottom level was a lighted blue pool shaped like a kidney. He saw no human activity anywhere.
Bosch sat down on a bench and enjoyed the view like the other tourists on the promontory. But his thoughts were of murder and the kind of people who pay others to kill their competitors and enemies. The ultimate narcissists who think that the world revolves around only them. He wondered how many were out there among the billion lights that glowed up at him through the haze.
Bosch heard an authoritative voice and turned to see a city parks ranger putting the beam of a flashlight in people’s faces and telling them that the park was closed and that they had to leave or be cited for trespassing. He was being an impolite jerk and was wearing a wide-brimmed Dudley Do-Right hat that undercut his authority. When he came up to roust Bosch, the only one who hadn’t scurried out to the parking turnout, Harry held up his badge and said he was working.
“You still have to go,” the ranger said. “Park’s closed.”
Bosch noticed that the nameplate on his uniform said Bender.
“First of all, get that light out of my face. Second, I’m on a case and I’m watching a house over there and this is the only place I can see it from. I’ll be out of here in ten minutes.”
Bender lowered the light. He looked like he was unused to people defying him.
“They really make you wear that hat?” Bosch asked.
Bender studied him for a moment and Bosch looked right back at him. In the glow from the lights below, Bosch could see his temples pulsing.
“Do you have a name to go with that badge?”
“Sure do. It’s Bosch. Robbery-Homicide Division. Thanks for asking.”
Bosch waited. His move.
“Ten minutes,” Bender said. “I’ll be back to check.”
Bosch nodded.
“That makes me feel better.”
The ranger walked off toward the stairs leading to the parking lot, and Bosch turned his attention back to the concrete fortress. He noticed that the pool light was now out. He stood up and moved farther out to the edge of the lookout. There was a thigh-high safety barrier. By propping himself against it and leaning even farther out he improved his angle of sight on the Broussard mansion. He pulled the compact binoculars out of his jacket pocket and looked through them. He could now see in through some of the lighted windows. He saw a living room with large abstract paintings on twenty-foot walls and a kitchen where a woman was moving about behind a counter. It looked like she was emptying a dishwasher. She had dark hair but he could not really see her well. He guessed it was Maria Broussard, the woman whose marital indiscretion had started it all.
Bosch’s phone buzzed and startled him. He pulled himself back from the precipice and put the binoculars in his pocket. He took the call. It was Virginia Skinner.
“First of all, thank you again for dinner last night,” she said. “That was really nice and I had fun.”
“Me, too. We should do it again.”
There was a momentary pause as that registered and then she continued.
“The other thing is, are you still interested in Charles Broussard?”
Bosch stared at the Broussard house for a few moments before answering.
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, because it was a slow Monday today, and so I was looking through all the crap that accumulates on my desk. You know, press releases and political invites and all of that. I was really looking to see what I could just throw out and move off my desk, and I came across a press release for a fund-raiser that Broussard is co-hosting tomorrow for the Zeyas exploratory committee.”
“Tomorrow? At his house?”
“No, this one’s actually at the Beverly Hilton. It doesn’t even say that Zeyas will be there but you have to assume he’ll pop in to say a few words.”
“Do you need some kind of ticket or invitation to go?”
“Well, for me, no. I’m media. Otherwise it’s five hundred a plate.”
“Are you going?”
“Probably not . . . unless . . . if you were going, then I might.”
Bosch thought about things. His daughter had the alcohol sting the next night. She didn’t want Bosch to embarrass her by coming along, but his plan was to be there and watch over her without her knowing it. He felt the sergeant in charge wouldn’t be as vigilant as he would be—even from afar.
“What time is it at?”
“Seven in the Merv Griffin Room.”
“I might be in the vicinity, maybe stop and get a look at him. How about I let you know tomorrow?”
“Sure. Then you’re still interested in him?”
“I can’t talk about the case. We have a deal, remember?”
“Of course. I’m not writing anything until you give the go-ahead. So you can tell me anything and trust me not to use it.”
Bosch started pacing back toward the steps down to the turnout. The conversation had suddenly turned awkward with Skinner’s precise summary of the deal they made before having dinner the evening before. After that, they hadn’t mentioned it once.
“Harry? You there?”
“Yes, here. I’m sort of in the middle of something. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know if I’ll be going to that thing.”
“Okay, fine. Talk to you then.”
Bosch disconnected and pocketed the phone. He was about to take the steps down to his car but glanced back toward Broussard’s house. He saw a figure standing out on one of the balconies now. Moving back toward the end of the promontory, he pulled out the binoculars once more.
There was a man on the balcony, wearing what looked like an open robe over shorts and a T-shirt. There was the dim glow of a cigarette in one hand. He was heavyset and had a full beard.
And it looked like he was staring back at Bosch.
Maddie was at the table in the dining room, seated at the spot where Bosch usually sat to do his work. She had her laptop open and looked like she was composing some sort of school report.
“Hey, kid, what’s for dinner?” he asked.
He bent down and kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s your turn.”
“No, last night would have been your turn and it carries over because you did the Meals on Wheels thing.”
“No, that’s not how it works. Too complicated. You just gotta know which days are yours, and Monday is yours.”
Bosch knew she was right because the point had been argued before. But he had been unnerved by the long-distance confrontation with the man he believed was Charles Broussard. Bosch had been the first to turn away and go back to his car.
“Well, then, I don’t have anything,” he said. “Who do you want to call or where do you want me to go for pickup?”
“Poquito Más?”
“Fine with me. You want the usual?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Poquito Más was literally right below their house at the bottom of the hill. With a good throw, Bosch could have hit the roof of the restaurant with a rock from his back deck. Sometimes from the same spot he could even smell the flavors of the Mexican restaurant down below. But getting there was another matter. Bosch had to follow Woodrow Wilson down the hill in a circuitous path and then take Cahuenga Boulevard nearly a mile up to the restaurant. It was one of the strange contradictions of the city. No matter how close something looked, it was still far away.
While he was waiting for his order to be put together, he got a call fro
m Captain Crowder.
“You know a parks ranger named Bender?”
Bosch frowned and shook his head.
“Just met him tonight.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t like the encounter.”
“You’re kidding me, right? I’ve been beefed by Dudley Do-Right?”
“Tomorrow I need you to write up a memorandum of your side of the conversation.”
“Whatever.”
“Did you really make fun of the guy’s hat?”
“Yes, Captain, I guess I sort of did.”
“Harry, Harry, Harry . . . come on, you know those guys have no sense of humor.”
“Live and learn, Captain.”
“What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Just taking in the view.”
“Well . . . I don’t think this is going anywhere but get me that memo, okay?”
“Will do.”
“Anything new on Merced since we talked?”
Bosch wasn’t ready to put the name Broussard out there with command staff yet. So he stayed away from that.
“We recovered the weapon,” he said.
“What!” Crowder exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were gone by the time we got back. I was going to update you in the morning.”
“Where was it?”
“Hidden in a dead guy’s house.”
“You mean our shooter is dead?”
“It’s looking that way.”
“This is sort of great. It means no trial. We can wrap this thing up with a big pink bow this week.”
“Not quite, Captain. If this guy was the shooter, someone put him up to it. That’s who we want.”
The woman behind the counter called out Bosch’s number. His takeout dinner was ready.
“Do we know who that is?” Crowder asked.
“We’re working on it,” Bosch said. “I’ll know more tomorrow.” Bosch had the sense that Crowder wanted additional information but Harry knew he was a direct conduit to the tenth floor of the PAB. Bosch couldn’t afford to let Broussard’s name start circulating on the floor that was more about politics than police. Crowder relented.
“Okay, Harry,” he said. “Tomorrow. I want to know what you know.”
“You got it, Captain,” Bosch said.
He hung up and grabbed the bag of food off the counter.
27
On Tuesday afternoon Bosch and Soto sat in the seventeenth-floor waiting room at the District Attorney’s Office for twenty minutes before being allowed in to see a filing deputy. Bosch thought the wait was because he had asked specifically for John Lewin to review their case. But they didn’t get Lewin. They got a young hotshot named Jake Boland, who proudly hung his Harvard Law sheepskin on the wall of his ten-by-ten office. He was in shirtsleeves after a busy morning of filing cases, his suit jacket on a hanger on the back of his door. Bosch and Soto sat down in side-by-side chairs in front of his desk.
“We’re not here in any official capacity,” Bosch said.
“What do you mean?” Boland asked. “I’m a filing deputy. Let’s file a case.”
“We don’t know if we’re there yet. That’s what I want to hear from you. But I don’t want you to enter it on the log or treat this as a filing request, because if you reject it and we later file it, some defense attorney is going to get that out in front of a jury—that this case was originally rejected by the D.A. So let’s just say we’re here for advice only.”
Boland leaned back as if distancing himself from the detectives and their case.
“Then I can’t really give you a lot of time. I’ve got to file cases. At the end of the day, that’s what they look at here. If I don’t file cases, I don’t get that courtroom assignment I’m in line for.”
“But you have to file good cases. If you file dogs, they’ll never let you near a courtroom.”
“Look, can you just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me so I can get on to the next one? We’ve got a waiting room out there with detectives who actually want to file cases. I know that might be a novel idea to you two, but believe it or not, it does happen.”
At this point Bosch wanted to reach across the desk and grab Boland by his skinny purple tie, but he held his composure. Trading off with Soto, they began to tell the young prosecutor what they had, including the major developments of the morning—namely that the two other weapons found hidden in David Willman’s workbench had been connected by Gun Chung to murders in Las Vegas and San Diego. One before the Merced shooting and one after. Additionally, fingerprints pulled off the Merced murder weapon the evening before were matched to David Willman.
When they were finished, Boland leaned back again and this time drummed a pen against his upturned chin as he considered the story they had just told.
“So you have a hit man out there on this hunting ranch and weapons that tie him to three killings,” he said. “And no connection at all between the killings?”
Bosch shook his head.
“Other than him having possession of all the murder weapons? No. The Vegas thing was a rap DJ who was machine-gunned in his car à la Tupac Shakur. Made the police look at it like a gang thing but it was probably the end of a business deal gone sideways. The one in San Diego was probably a husband taking out his wife for the insurance. That was what was suspected at the time, but he was alibied and the cops had no leads—until we called today.”
Boland paused the drumming for a moment.
“What about the sword?”
“Nothing on that yet.”
“Any idea how these people knew to go to Willman for these hits? I mean, did he advertise on the Internet or what?”
“We don’t know yet, but the agencies involved are on it now.”
Boland nodded.
“By the way, did you get a warrant to search for those weapons?” he asked.
“Nope,” Bosch said. “We were invited to search by one of the current owners of the property.”
Boland frowned.
“Still should’ve papered it to make it clean.”
“It was clean,” Bosch insisted. “The lady there had nothing to do with the case. They bought the house from Willman’s estate six years ago. Why would we need a judge’s signature to search the garage when she said, ‘Please do,’ and the weapons we found were obviously abandoned by the previous owner?”
“Because when in doubt you whip it out—always bring a warrant. Come on, Detective. That’s basic.”
“But there wasn’t any doubt. That search was clean. Are you sure you went to Harvard?”
Boland’s face turned scarlet.
“Detective, you know what else is basic?” he managed to ask. “Not insulting the prosecutor you want to file your case.”
“If you were acting like a prosecutor, there wouldn’t be any insult. And I didn’t ask you to file the case. I asked you what we were missing, what we needed. I didn’t ask you to piss on what we already have.”
Soto put her hand on Bosch’s arm, trying to bring him down. Boland held his hand out in a calming manner.
“Look,” he said. “Let’s start over. Whatever the details of the search, we live with it, and I think what you have here is a case against a dead hit man. But you don’t have a case against Broussard or anybody else. Not even close.”
“Broussard’s wife was having an affair with the intended target,” Soto said.
“Says who?” asked Boland.
“We have the witness and his story adds up,” she answered. “On top of that, the guy who took the shot was Broussard’s business partner. They were best friends since high school. You’re saying that’s not enough?”
Boland put the pen down and leaned forward.
“Guys, seriously, it’s not enough,” he said. “You go forward with what you’ve got and you can count on a number of things happening. First of all, you can count on Broussard having a drop-dead, ironclad alibi. I’m betting he was in another state with at least ten witnesses
with him. That’s how these guys do this. Second, you can expect his wife to deny everything—the affair, this Ojeda guy, that her husband could ever have done anything like this. She’ll be a solid witness for the defense. And third, you can expect your witness—Ojeda—to fold before he even gets to the stand. They’ll get to him first and buy him off or scare him off. One or the other.”
Soto shook her head in frustration. Boland continued to dismantle the case in front of them.
“You have nothing that says Broussard asked or paid Willman to do this. Like I said, you might be able to convict Willman, but he’s dead. You need a direct connection between Broussard and the crime, not just Broussard and Willman having known each other since high school. That proves nothing in a court of law.”
“What about the Willman shooting?” Bosch asked.
Boland shrugged.
“It was ruled an accident by Riverside County. Fricking OSHA said it was an accident. I mean, unless you can prove otherwise, it’s no help to our cause. It’s probably not even admissible.”
“What about the lawsuit Broussard settled with Willman’s widow? Do we have any shot of breaking the seal on that?”
“Probably not. These guns you found have nothing to do with that case, do they?”
Bosch reluctantly shook his head. No one wants to be told they’ve come up short—especially when the telling is coming from a pompous prick. But Bosch was finally able to separate Boland’s annoying personality from what he was saying. Harry understood that the young prosecutor was probably right. They didn’t have a case yet. Soto was about to protest the rejection, when Bosch this time reached over to her and put his hand on her arm to stop her.
“So, then, what do we need?” he asked.
“Well, a signed confession is always nice,” Boland said. “But realistically, I would want someone or something that brings us inside the conspiracy. It’s too bad Willman’s dead, because if he was alive we could pit the two principals against each other and play who-talks-first. But that’s obviously not going to happen.”