Bosch scanned down the list. Nothing looked immediately familiar. Many of the calls were to or from business listings with some automobile connection clearly apparent in the name. Many others came in from the AAA dispatch center and these were likely tow calls.
There were also several calls that came from personal phones. Bosch looked closely at these names but saw nothing that jumped out at him. No one listed was an already established player in the case.
There were four entries on the list that were attributed to Visa, all the same number. Bosch picked up the phone and called it. He never heard it ring. He just got the loud screeching sound of a computer hookup. It was so loud that even Rider heard it.
"What is that?"
Bosch hung up.
"I'm trying to run down that note I saw on the desk in the station about Visa calling to confirm Mackey's employment. Remember you said it didn't fit?"
"I forgot about that. Was that the number?"
"I don't know. There are four listings for Visa but-wait a minute."
He realized that the Visa calls were outgoing calls.
"Never mind, these were outgoing. It must be the number the machine calls when you use a credit card to pay. That's not it. There is no incoming call listed as Visa."
Bosch picked up the phone again and called Nord's cell phone.
"Are you at the service station yet?"
She laughed.
"We've barely cleared Hollywood. We'll be there in a half hour."
"Ask them about a phone message somebody left for Mackey yesterday. Something about Visa calling to confirm employment on a credit application. Ask them what they remember from the call and more importantly, what time it came in. Try to get the exact time if you can. Ask them about this first thing and then call me back."
"Yes, sir. You want us to pick up your laundry, too?"
Bosch realized it was getting to be a bad morning for stepping on toes.
"Sorry," he said. "We're working under the gun here."
"Aren't we all? I'll call you as soon as we see the guy."
Nord hung up. Bosch put the phone down and looked at Rider. She was looking at the class picture of Rebecca Verloren in the yearbook they had borrowed.
"What are you thinking?" she asked without looking up at Bosch.
"This thing with Visa bothers me."
"I know, so what are you thinking?"
"Well, say you're the killer and you got the gun you did it with from Mackey."
"You're completely giving up on Burkhart? You sure liked him last night."
"Let's just say the facts are persuading me. For now, okay?"
"Okay, go on."
"All right, so you're the killer and you got the gun from Mackey. He's the one person in the world who can put the thing on you. But seventeen years go by and nothing ever happens and you feel safe and maybe you even lose track of Mackey."
"Okay."
"And then yesterday you pick up the paper and you see the picture of Rebecca and you read the story and it says they've got DNA. You know it wasn't your blood, so it was either a big bluff by the cops or it's got to be Mackey's blood. So that's when you know."
"Mackey's gotta go."
"Exactly. The cops are getting close. He's got to go. So how do you find him? Well, Mackey's spent his entire life-when he isn't in jail-driving a tow truck. If you knew that then you'd do exactly what we did. You get out the yellow pages and start calling tow companies."
Rider stood up and went to the bank of file cabinets along the alcove's back wall. The phone books were stacked haphazardly on top. She had to stand on her toes to reach the yellow pages for the Valley. She came back and opened the book to the pages advertising tow services. She ran her finger down a listing until she reached Tampa Towing, where Mackey had worked. She backed up to the previous listing, a company called Tall Order Towing Services. She picked up her phone and dialed the number. Bosch heard only her side of the conversation.
"Yes, who am I speaking with?"
She waited a moment.
"My name is Detective Kizmin Rider with the Los Angeles Police Department. I am investigating a fraud case and wondered if I could ask you a question."
Rider nodded as she apparently got a go-ahead.
"The suspect I am documenting has a history of calling businesses and identifying himself as someone working for Visa. He then attempts to verify someone else's employment as part of an application for a credit card. Does any of this ring a bell with you? We have information that leads us to believe that this individual was operating in the Valley yesterday. He likes to target automotive businesses."
Rider waited while there was a response to her question. She looked at Bosch but gave no indication of anything.
"Yes, could you put her on the line, please?"
Rider went through the whole thing again with another person and asked the same question. Then she leaned forward and seemed to take a stiffer attitude in her posture. She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Bosch.
"Bingo," she said.
She then went back to the phone call and listened some more.
"Was it a male or female?"
She wrote something down.
"And what time was this?"
She wrote another note and Bosch stood up so he could look across his desk to read it. She had written "male, 1:30 approx" on a scratch pad. While she continued the conversation Bosch consulted the pen register and saw that a call came in on the Tampa Towing line at 1:40 p.m. It was from a personal number. The name on the register was Amanda Sobek. The number's prefix indicated it was a cell phone. Neither the name nor the number meant anything to Bosch. But that didn't matter. He thought they were getting close to something here.
Rider finished her call by asking if the person she was talking to remembered the name the supposed Visa employee had tried to confirm. After she apparently got a negative reply, she asked, "What about the name Roland Mackey?"
She waited.
"Are you sure?" she asked. "Okay, thank you for your time, Karen."
She hung up and looked at Bosch. The excitement in her eyes wiped out everything about being left out of the morning's fingerprints find.
"You were right," she said. "They got a call. Same thing. She even remembered the name Roland Mackey once I gave it to her. Harry, somebody was tracking him down the whole time we were watching him."
"And now we're going to track them down. If they were going down the line in the phone book they would have called Tampa Towing next. The register shows a one-forty call from somebody named Amanda Sobek. I don't recognize it but this might be the call we're looking for."
"Amanda Sobek," Rider said as she opened her laptop. "Let's see what AutoTrack has on her."
While she was tracing the name, Bosch got a call from Robinson, who had arrived with Nord at Tampa Towing.
"Harry, the dayshift guy says that call came in between one-thirty and two o'clock. He knows because he had just come back from lunch and he was sent out on a tow at two o'clock. A Triple A run."
"Was it a male or female caller from Visa?"
"Male."
"Okay, anything else?"
"Yeah, once this guy confirmed that Mackey worked here, the Visa guy asked what hours he worked."
"Okay. Can you ask the day man another question?"
"He's right here."
"Ask if they have a customer named Sobek. Amanda Sobek."
Bosch waited while the question was asked.
"No customer named Sobek," Robinson reported back. "Is that good news, Harry?"
"It'll work."
After closing the phone Bosch got up and walked around the desks so he could look at Rider's computer screen. He told her what Robinson had just reported.
"Anything on Amanda Sobek?" he asked.
"Yeah, this is it. She lives in the West Valley. Farralone Avenue in Chatsworth. But there is not a lot here. No credit cards or mortgage. I think it means it's all in her husband's name. Sh
e might be a housewife. I'm running the address to see if I can pull him up."
Bosch opened the yearbook to Rebecca Verloren's class. He started flipping through the pages looking for the name Sobek or Amanda.
"Here he is," Rider said. "Mark Sobek. Everything's basically in his name and it looks like a lot. Four cars, two houses, lots of credit cards."
"There was nobody named Sobek in her class," Bosch said. "But there were two girls named Amanda. Amanda Reynolds and Amanda Riordan. Think she is one of them?"
Rider shook her head.
"I don't think so. The age is off. This says Amanda Sobek is forty-one. That would make her eight years older than Rebecca. Something doesn't fit. Think we should just call her?"
Bosch closed the yearbook with a bang. Rider jumped in her seat.
"No," he said. "Let's just go."
"Where? To see her?"
"Yeah. Time to get off your ass and knock on doors."
He looked down at Rider and could tell she wasn't amused.
"I don't mean your ass specifically. It's a figure of speech. Let's just go."
She started getting up.
"You are awfully flippant for somebody who might not have a job at the end of the day."
"It's the only way to be, Kiz. Darkness waits. But it comes no matter what you do."
He led the way out of the office.
37
THE FARRALONE AVENUE address AutoTrack led Bosch and Rider to belonged to a Mediterranean-style mansion that had to have been on the upper side of 6,000 square feet. It had a separate garage with four dark-stained wooden doors and windows from a guest suite above. The detectives had to view all of this through a wrought iron gate while waiting for someone to answer the intercom. Finally a voice came from the small square box on a pole next to Bosch's open window.
"Yes, who is it?"
It was a woman. She sounded young.
"Amanda Sobek?" Bosch asked in reply.
"No, this is her assistant. Who are you two?"
Bosch looked again at the box and saw the camera lens. They were being watched as well as listened to. He pulled out his badge and held it a foot from the lens.
"Police," he said. "We need to talk to Amanda or Mark Sobek."
"About what?"
"About police business. Open the gate, please, ma'am."
They waited and Bosch was just about to punch the call button again when the gate slowly started to automatically open. They drove in and parked in a turnaround circle in front of the two-story portico.
"Looks like the kind of place it might be worth killing a tow truck driver to protect," Bosch said quietly as he cut the engine.
The door was opened before they got there by a woman in her twenties. She was wearing a skirt and a white blouse. The assistant.
"And you are?" Bosch asked.
"Melody Lane. I work for Mrs. Sobek."
"Is she here?" Rider asked.
"Yes, she's getting dressed and will be right down. You can wait in the living room."
They were led into an entrance hallway, where there was a table with several family photos on display. It looked like a husband, wife and two teenaged daughters. They followed Melody into a sumptuous living room with large windows looking out on Santa Susana State Park and Oat Mountain beyond.
Bosch checked his watch. It was almost noon. Melody noticed.
"She wasn't sleeping. She worked out earlier and was taking a shower. She should be down -"
She didn't need to finish. An attractive woman in white slacks and blouse left open over a pink chiffon shirt came hurrying into the room.
"What is it? Is something wrong? Are my girls all right?"
"Are you Amanda Sobek?" Bosch asked.
"Of course I am. What is wrong? Why are you here?"
Bosch pointed to the grouping of couch and chairs in the center of the room.
"Why don't we sit down here, Mrs. Sobek."
"Just tell me if something is wrong."
The panic on her face looked real to Bosch. He started to think they may have made a wrong turn somewhere.
"Nothing is wrong," he said. "This is not about your daughters. Your daughters are fine."
"Is it Mark?"
"No, Mrs. Sobek. As far as we know he is fine, too. Let's sit down over here."
She finally relented and walked quickly to the big chair to the right of the couch. Bosch moved around a glass coffee table and sat on the couch. Rider took one of the remaining chairs. Bosch identified himself and Rider and showed his badge again. He noticed that the glass on the table was spotless.
"We are conducting an investigation that I can't tell you about. I need to ask you some questions about your cell phone."
"My cell phone? You scared me to death over my cell phone?"
"It's actually a very serious investigation, Mrs. Sobek. Do you have your cell phone with you?"
"It's in my purse. Do you need to see it?"
"No, not yet. Can you tell me when you used it yesterday?"
Sobek shook her head like it was an inane question.
"I don't know. In the morning I called Melody from the gym. I can't remember when else. I went to the store and called my daughters to see if they were on their way home after school. I can't remember anything else. I was home almost all day except for the gym. When I'm home I don't use my cell. I use the regular phone."
Bosch's misgivings were multiplying. Somewhere they had made a wrong move.
"Could someone else have used the phone?" Rider asked.
"My daughters have their own. So does Melody. I don't understand this."
Bosch pulled the page from the pen register out of his coat pocket. Out loud he read the number of the phone that had called Tampa Towing.
"Is that your number?" he asked.
"No, it's my daughter's. It's Kaitlyn's."
Bosch leaned forward. This changed things further.
"Your daughter's? Where was she yesterday?"
"I already told you. She was in school. And she didn't use her phone until after, because it's not allowed at school."
"What school does she go to?" Rider asked.
"Hillside Prep. It's over in Porter Ranch."
Bosch leaned back and looked at Rider. Something had just come full circle. He wasn't sure what it was but it felt important.
Amanda Sobek read the looks on their faces.
"What is it?" she asked. "Is something wrong at the school?"
"Not as far as we know, ma'am," Bosch answered. "What grade is your daughter in?"
"She is a sophomore."
"Does she have a teacher named Bailey Sable?" Rider asked.
Sobek nodded.
"She has her for homeroom and English."
"Is there any reason why Mrs. Sable might have borrowed your daughter's phone yesterday?" Rider asked.
Sobek shrugged.
"Not that I can think of. You have to understand how strange this is. All these questions. Was her phone used to make a threat or something? Is this some kind of terrorist thing?"
"No, ma'am," Bosch said. "But it is a serious matter. We are going to have to go to the school now and talk to your daughter. We would appreciate it if you came with us and were there when we spoke to her."
"Does she need a lawyer?"
"I don't think so, ma'am."
Bosch stood up.
"Shall we go?"
"Can Melody come too? I want Melody to go with me."
"Tell you what. Have Melody meet us there. That way she can drive you back if we need to go somewhere else."
38
ON THE DRIVE OVER to Hillside Prep the car was silent. Bosch wanted to talk to Rider, to dope out this latest twist, but he didn't want to do it in front of Amanda Sobek. So they were silent until their passenger asked if she could call her husband and Bosch said that was fine. But she couldn't reach him and left a message in a near-hysterical voice telling him to call her as soon as he could.