“What’s going on is I’m a police officer and you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do,” he said. “You understand me?”
The pilot was late sixties and white, with gin blossoms across his nose. A pilot no one else would hire.
“Yes, sir, no problem,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
His English was unaccented. He was likely native-born American. Bosch took a chance, noting the man’s age and the blurred tattoos on his arms.
“You remember the A-six from Vietnam?” he asked.
“I sure do,” the pilot said. “The Intruder, great plane.”
“I flew ’em back then and haven’t flown since. But you make one wrong move and I’ll put a bullet in your head and have to learn to fly all over again.”
Bosch had never flown a plane before, let alone an Intruder. But he needed a believable threat to keep the pilot in line.
“No problem, sir,” the pilot said. “Just tell me where you want to go. I don’t have any idea what was going on back there. I just fly the plane. They tell me where.”
“Save it,” Bosch said. “How much fuel do we have?”
“I tapped it this morning. We’re full.”
“What’s the range?”
“Three hundred miles easy.”
“Okay, take me back to L.A. Up to Whiteman.”
“Not a problem.”
The pilot started going through maneuvers to change course. Bosch saw the radio mic hooked to the instrument panel. He grabbed it.
“This on?”
“Yes, press the button on the side to transmit.”
Bosch found the transmit button and then hesitated, unsure what to say.
“Hello, any airport tower that can read this. Come back.”
Bosch looked at the pilot, wondering if he had just revealed that he had never flown a plane before. The radio saved him.
“This is Imperial County Airport, go ahead.”
“My name is Harry Bosch. I’m a detective with the San Fernando Police Department. I am flying in a plane after an in-air event leaving one passenger dead and one missing over the Salton Sea. Requesting radio contact be made with Agent Hovan of the DEA. I can give a number when you are ready to copy.”
Bosch clicked off and waited for the response. He felt the tensions that had gripped him for nearly forty-eight hours start to slacken off as the plane headed north toward safety and home.
From two thousand feet up, the land below looked beautiful to Bosch and nothing like the badlands he knew it to be.
29
Bosch got a crowded reception from state, local, and federal authorities when the plane landed under DEA air escort at Whiteman Airport. There were DEA agents, Jerry Edgar with a team from the state medical board, and Chief Valdez and the investigators from San Fernando standing front and center. There was also a coroner’s van and death team, a pair of LAPD detectives from Foothill Division, their own forensic tech, and a pair of paramedics just in case Bosch required medical attention.
The plane was directed into an empty hangar so that it could be processed as a crime scene without media or public scrutiny. Bosch squeezed through the cockpit door and into the passenger section and the pilot followed. He told the pilot to climb through the jump door with his hands up. As he did so, Bosch stepped to the back of the compartment. He took a long look at the man he had killed, his body lying still on the floor of the plane. Blood had run from the body in crisscross patterns as the plane had banked and changed altitude during the flight. Bosch moved back up to the jump door and exited the plane.
Two men in black tactical pants and shirts, their sidearms held down by their sides, helped him off the jump platform.
“DEA?” Bosch asked.
“Yes, sir,” said one agent. “We are going to go in and clear the plane now. Is there anyone else inside?”
“Nobody alive.”
“Okay, sir. There are some people here who want to talk to you now.”
“And I want to talk to them.”
Bosch stepped away from the plane’s wing, and Bella Lourdes was there waiting for him.
“Harry, you all right?”
“Better than the guy in the plane. How are we handling the debrief?”
“The DEA has a mobile command post. You’re supposed to go in there with us, the LAPD, Edgar, and Hovan. You ready, or you want to—”
“I’m ready. Let’s get this over with. But I want to see the L.A. Times first. That story today almost got me killed.”
“We have it for you.”
“Talk about bad timing.”
She led him to a huddle with Valdez, Sisto, Luzon, and Trevino. The chief clapped him on the upper arm and said he had done good. There was an awkwardness about the greeting, considering what Bosch had been through, and it was the first indication that the Times story was going to be difficult to deal with.
Bosch pressed on with the case at hand.
“Our case is closed,” he said. “The dead guy in the plane was one of the shooters. The other one jumped out. I don’t think he made it.”
“The fricking guy just jumped out of the plane?” Sisto said.
He said it in a tone that implied he thought otherwise, like maybe the Russian had help jumping.
Bosch held his eyes with a stare.
“Crazy Russians,” Sisto said. “Just saying.”
“Let’s wait on all of that until we sit down with everybody,” Valdez said. “Bella, you take Harry to the debriefing, I’ll get the paper. Harry, you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“I’ll have somebody get you something and bring it in.”
Bella had walked Bosch halfway through the hangar when they encountered Edgar. He smiled at Bosch as he approached.
“Partner, you made it,” he said. “Can’t wait to hear the rundown. Sounds like a close fucking call.”
Bosch nodded.
“You know what?” he said. “If you hadn’t told me that rumor about people going up in the plane and not coming back, I might not be here right now, partner. That gave me the edge on these guys.”
“Well, I’m glad I did something,” Edgar said.
The mobile command post was an unmarked RV that had probably been seized in a drug case, then gutted on the inside and reequipped. Bosch and Lourdes stepped into what looked like a mini board of directors’ meeting room. There was a separation wall with a door that led to an electronics nest. Agent Hovan stepped out of the nest, shook Bosch’s hand, and welcomed him back.
“Anything on the second Russian?” Bosch asked.
Bosch had reported on Igor’s jump without a parachute while on the plane flying toward Whiteman. The DEA had dispatched a rescue effort.
“Nothing,” Hovan said. “It’s a long shot.”
Hovan instructed Bosch to sit at one end of the table so he would be visible to all who would gather for the briefing. Lourdes took the seat to his right, and the rest of the SFPD team took the chairs down that side of the table. Valdez came in and dropped the A section of the Times on the table in front of Bosch and then sat down.
The story had been a front-page lead, its headline a kick to Bosch’s gut. He tried to read it as agents and officers started to file into the command post and take seats.
D.A. Cites DNA, Police Misconduct; Will Vacate Death Penalty
By David Ramsey, Times Staff Writer
A man sentenced to death for a 1987 rape and murder of a Toluca Lake actress may walk free as early as Wednesday when prosecutors cite new DNA evidence and misconduct on the part of the Los Angeles police and ask a judge to vacate the conviction.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has requested the Superior Court hearing in the case of Preston Borders, who has been imprisoned since his arrest almost 30 years ago. Borders had exhausted all appeals in the case and was languishing on death row at San Quentin until the D.A.’s newly created Conviction Integrity Unit decided to review his claims that he was framed for the mur
der of Danielle Skyler.
Skyler was found raped and murdered in her apartment in Toluca Lake. Borders was an acquaintance who had previously dated her and was tied to the crime when jewelry allegedly taken from the victim during the assault was found hidden in his apartment. In a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence, Borders was convicted after a one-week trial and later sentenced to death.
Deputy DA Alex Kennedy said that recently completed DNA analysis on the victim’s clothing revealed a match between a small amount of bodily fluid found on the clothing and a serial rapist named Lucas John Olmer, who was known to be operating in Los Angeles at the time. Olmer was later convicted of sexual assault in several other unrelated cases and died in prison in 2015.
Kennedy said investigators now believe that it was Olmer who murdered Skyler and may also have been responsible for two other murders of young women that police initially suspected Borders of but never filed charges on.
“We think it was Olmer who stalked and murdered her, entering through a balcony door that had been left unlocked,” Kennedy said. “He was a serial offender who stalked victims in that area.”
Court documents obtained by the Times reveal that Borders and his attorney Lance Cronyn have claimed that the jewelry found in Borders’s apartment was planted there by a detective who was the lead investigator on the case.
“This has been a gross miscarriage of justice,” Cronyn said. “Mr. Borders has lost more than half of his life because of this.”
Cronyn and court documents identify the two detectives who conducted the search of the apartment and reported finding the piece of jewelry in a secret compartment as Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch and Francis Sheehan. The Times has learned that Sheehan is deceased and Bosch retired from the LAPD three years ago.
Bosch testified during the trial in 1988 that he found the jewelry—described as a sea-horse pendant—hidden in the false bottom of a bookshelf during the search of Borders’s apartment. Borders, an actor who knew Skyler from auditions and workshops, was arrested shortly after the discovery.
Bosch could not be reached for comment for this story. He was well known as an LAPD detective for more than three decades and was involved in many high-profile investigations. He now works as a volunteer detective for the San Fernando Police Department. Last week he was involved in the investigation of two pharmacists who were murdered during a suspected robbery at a drugstore in the main shopping area of the small town in the San Fernando Valley.
The story jumped inside from there, but Bosch had read enough and was not inclined to unfold the section to the page with his photograph. He was aware that everyone crowded into the room now was watching him and knew what the newspaper report said about him.
He put the paper down on the floor next to his chair. It had no doubt been a hit piece orchestrated by either Cronyn or Kennedy. There was no mention, before the jump at least, of an opposing view of Borders’s innocence. No mention that Mickey Haller had by now hopefully filed a motion seeking to stop the D.A.’s action.
Bosch looked up at the faces lining both sides of the table. Opposite him at the other end was Hovan. And next to him was Joe Smith, his UC trainer.
“Okay, two things before we start,” Bosch said. “I haven’t had a shower since Wednesday and I apologize for that. If you think it’s funky from where you’re sitting, just be glad you’re not where I am. The other thing is that the story today in the Times is complete bullshit. I planted no evidence in that or any other case and Preston Borders will never walk free. You can check back after the hearing Wednesday, and the Times will be running a story that says so.”
Bosch checked the faces in the room. There were a few nods of approval, but for the most part the investigators in the room gave no indication whether they believed him or not. It was what he had expected.
“Okay, then,” he said. “The sooner we get to this, the sooner I get to a shower. How do you want to start?”
He looked down the length of the table to Hovan. It was his agency’s RV. Bosch figured that made him the man in charge.
“We’ll have questions, but I think you can start anywhere you want,” Hovan said. “Why don’t you give us the headlines and go from there?”
Bosch nodded.
“Well, the big headline is that there is no Santos anymore,” he said. “The Russians threw him out of a plane into the Salton Sea. One of them told me that right before they were going to do the same to me.”
“Why would he tell you that?” asked an agent Bosch didn’t know. “Russians don’t usually break so easy.”
“He didn’t break,” Bosch said. “He was about to kill me. He had the upper hand and wanted to gloat, I guess. He also indicated that he and his partner, the one who jumped, killed the father and son in the pharmacy Monday.”
“Indicated?” Lourdes said.
“Yes, indicated,” Bosch said. “I asked him straight out if they had killed the father and son. He didn’t deny it. He said that they got what they deserved. He was smiling when he said it. But soon after that, things changed and I got the upper hand. That’s when I killed him.”
30
They kept him for three hours in the mobile command post, at least half of that time spent going into great detail about what had happened that morning on the plane. All parties except for Edgar, the medical board investigator, had stakes in the death investigation and had questions to cover. Because the actual killing of the Russian occurred in the air over the Salton Sea, it became a jurisdictional dilemma. It was agreed that the National Transportation Safety Board would be apprised of the death, but the LAPD would handle the lead because the plane with the body on board touched land at Whiteman Airport in the city of Los Angeles.
The session in the command post was followed by a two-hour walk-through in the constricted confines of the plane, during which Bosch tried to show the investigators what he had been talking about for the previous three hours. It was agreed at the end that Bosch would make himself available later in the week for follow-up questions from all agencies. He was released at about the same time as the body of the Russian he had referred to as Ivan was removed from the plane and transported to the Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsy.
Meanwhile, he was told, the DEA was putting together a raid team to hit the encampment near Slab City and gather up the remaining players in the drug operation. It was decided that a media blackout would be kept tight on the case until that raid had concluded.
Bosch was given a ride back to the SFPD station by Lourdes. He had left his Jeep there as well as his real ID and cell phone. She also had to collect his bloody clothes as evidence in the use of the deadly force investigation. He lowered the window as they drove because he couldn’t stand his own stink.
“You going to talk to Mrs. Esquivel about all of this?” he asked.
“I think we should wait until we get the all clear from the DEA,” Lourdes said. “You want to go with me?”
“Nah. She’ll be more comfortable with you and speaking Spanish. It’s your case.”
“Yeah, but you cleared it.”
“I won’t feel certain of that until they find Igor.”
“Right, well, more salt, more buoyancy. They’ll find him one way or the other.”
She knew who both Ivan and Igor were from the debriefing. Assigning names to the various principals had made it easier to tell the story, but the truth was, no one knew the real names of any of the individuals. Bosch thought about that and remembered the woman with the stars on her hand, another person he didn’t have a real name for.
“What happened with the woman Edgar and Hovan popped at the pharmacy on Saturday?”
“She got booked and sent to Van Nuys.”
The SFPD’s jail was not used for holding female arrestees. They were transported to the Van Nuys jail, which was operated by the LAPD and had a female ward as well as a detox center.
“Did you happen to get her name?”
“Uh, yeah, I did. It
was…what was it?…Elizabeth something. Clayburgh or Clayton, one of those. I’ll remember in a sec.”
“Was she cooperative?”
“You mean like was she thanking us for pulling her out of the virtual slavery you described in the debrief? No, Harry, she didn’t mention it. She was pretty pissed off, in fact, that she was under arrest and not going to be able to get her next fix in jail.”
“You don’t sound like you have a lot of sympathy.”
“I do to an extent. I’ve dealt with addicts all my life, including in my own family, and it’s hard to balance sympathy for them with the damage they do to their families and others.”
Bosch nodded. She had a point. But he could tell she was also upset about something else.
“You think I planted evidence in that case thirty years ago?”
“What? Why are you bringing that up?”
“’Cause I can tell I’ve got people upset all around me. If it’s that case, then you don’t have to worry. The paper makes it look bad, I know, but it’s not going to stick. It’s a frame.”
“You’re being framed?”
The skepticism in her voice began to offend Bosch but he tried to keep it in check.
“That’s right and it will all come out at the hearing,” he said.
“Good. I hope so.”
They got to the station and parked in the side lot. Bosch went into the new jail, where he took off his clothes in front of the duty officer and dropped them all into a cardboard box. While the officer took the box out to Lourdes to process, Bosch went into the jail shower and stood under the lukewarm spray for twenty-five minutes, repeatedly using the jail’s industrial-strength antibacterial soap on every part of his body.
When he was clean and dry, he was given a pair of jail pants and a golf shirt left over from the department’s annual fund-raiser tournament. There had been blood on his shoes, so they had gone into the box as well and were replaced with a pair of paper jail slippers.
Bosch didn’t care how he looked. He was clean and felt human again. He went to the detective bureau to get the key to his office in the old jail—he had left his car keys, phone, and real ID there. Lourdes was in the war room. She had spread butcher paper on the meeting-and-eating table and was taking photos of the individual pieces of Bosch’s clothing before bagging each item individually in a plastic evidence bag.