“Do you know if Borders gets much mail?”
“They all do. Remember Scott Peterson? His mail is off the charts. There are a lot of fucked-up women out there, Bosch. They fall in love with the bad guys. Only this is safe for them, because these bad guys aren’t getting out. Usually.”
“Right. What about letters going out?”
“Same thing. It goes through vetting before it’s sent. If there’s an issue with it, we turn it back to the inmate. Usually when we do that, it’s because the guy’s spinning some sick sex fantasy or something. Like what he’d do to the girl if they ever met up, shit like that. We don’t allow that out.”
“Got it.”
“Anyway, I’ve got your number on my Rolodex. I’m the last guy around here who still uses one. Let me find somebody to put on this and we’ll get back to you.”
“Then let me give you my cell. I’m out and about on another case—a double murder yesterday—and the cell is best. You can put it in your Rolodex.”
Bosch gave him the number and thanked him before disconnecting. He realized after the call that the information he was seeking might already be in the reports Soto had slipped to him. The new investigation should have covered who Borders was meeting with or communicating with, but Menendez gave no indication that he had received a similar request already. It left Bosch thinking that either Soto and Tapscott had dropped the ball or Menendez had just been playing him.
Either way Bosch would find out soon enough.
Bosch next called his lawyer, Mickey Haller, who also happened to be his half brother. Haller had handled the legal issues that had come up when Bosch left the LAPD, ultimately suing the department for a full pension payout. The department folded and Bosch received an additional $180,000 that went into the kitty he hoped one day to leave to his daughter.
Haller answered with what Bosch would describe as a reluctant grunt.
“It’s Bosch. I wake you?”
“No, man, I’m awake. I usually don’t answer blocked calls this early. It’s usually one of my clients saying, ‘Mick, the cops are knocking on my door with a warrant, what do I do?’ Stuff like that.”
“Well, I got a problem, but a little different.”
“My brutha from another mutha, what’s wrong? DUI?”
Haller was fond of the line and said it every time, always employing a half-assed impression of the Texas-bred Matthew McConaughey, the actor who had played him in a movie six years earlier.
“No, no DUI. Worse.”
Bosch proceeded to tell Haller about the visit the day before from Soto, Tapscott, and Kennedy. “So my question is, should I be putting my pension and my house and everything else in Maddie’s name right now? I mean, all of this is for her, not Borders.”
“First of all, fuck that. You won’t pay a dime to that guy. Let me ask a couple of questions. Did these people who came to see you say or imply that there was any malfeasance on your part? Like you planted evidence or you withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense during the trial? Anything like that?”
“Not so far. They acted like it was a lab fuckup, if there even was one. Back then they didn’t have the same techniques they use today. No DNA or any of that.”
“That’s what I mean. So if something was missed during the due diligence and you were just carrying out your job in good faith, then the city has to cover you in any action Borders might take against you. Simple as that, and we’ll sue the city if it doesn’t. Wait till the union gets ahold of that and realizes the city isn’t covering guys just doing their jobs.”
Bosch thought about what Soto had said about casting blame on Sheehan. It had not come up in the meeting with Kennedy. Was she trying to tip him off to another issue raised in the reinvestigation? He decided not to bring it up until he had been able to review the entire file.
“Okay,” he said.
He felt some relief from talking to Haller. He might soon face a career-ending humiliation but it appeared that at least his finances and his daughter’s inheritance would be protected.
“What’s the name of the DA from CIU who came to see you?” Haller said. “I’ve dealt with those people a few times.”
“Kennedy,” Bosch said. “I can’t remember his first name.”
“Alex Kennedy. He’s a real D-bag. He may have played the respect card with you but that guy’s going to come up with the knife behind your back and try to take your scalp.”
So much for the relief Bosch felt. He was now on the 5 freeway and approaching the exit for San Fernando.
“The good news is, fuck him,” Haller said. “If this is all based on new evidence and not malfeasance of duty, then, like I said, the city will have to cover you. You want me to get involved with this?”
“Not yet,” Bosch said. “I’m looking into it. I reviewed my own investigation and I don’t think I was wrong back then. Borders did this and I’m going to find the fix. But the hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday. What are my options there?”
“Depending on what you find out between now and then, I could always file a motion challenging the whole shooting match and asking to be heard on the matter. It might stay the ruling, give the judge something to think about for a week or so. But we’ll eventually have to put up or shut up.”
Bosch thought about that. If he needed more time to investigate the case, that might be an option.
“That would be weird, though,” Haller said.
“What would?” Bosch asked.
“Me going into court to ask a judge not to release a prisoner on death row. That would be a first, as a matter of fact. I might have to farm it out to an associate. Being on the wrong side of this could be bad for business, bro. Just saying.”
“You wouldn’t be on the wrong side.”
“All I’m saying is, DNA is the great equalizer. How often do you think the cops get it wrong and send innocent people to prison?”
“Not very often.”
“One percent of the time? I mean, nobody’s perfect, right?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“In this country, there are two million people in prison. Two million. If the system gets it wrong one percent of the time, that is twenty thousand innocent people in jail. Lower it to a half of a percentage point and you’re still at ten thousand people. This is what keeps me awake at night. Why I always say, the scariest client is the innocent man. Because there is so much at stake.”
“Maybe you are the wrong guy for this, then.”
“Look, I’m just saying that the system is imperfect. There are innocent people in prison, innocent people on death row, innocent people executed. These are facts, and you have to think about that before you go whole hog on this. No matter what, you are personally protected. Just remember that.”
“I will. But I gotta go now. I have a meeting.”
“All right, bro. Call me when you need me.”
Bosch disconnected the call, now feeling worse about his situation than when he had started out from the house that morning.
8
Bosch entered the war room shortly before seven thirty, but Lourdes was already putting up case details and task lists on one of the whiteboards.
“Morning, Bella.”
“Hey, Harry. There’s a fresh pot in the squad.”
“I’m all right for now. You get some sleep?”
“A little. Hard to sleep with the first live murder case we’ve had around here in four years.”
Bosch pulled out a chair at the head of the table and sat down so he could study what she was putting up. To the left she had started two columns with a vertical line between them. One was marked “José” and the other “Junior.” Basic facts about each of the victims were listed below their names. He knew that she had spent most of the afternoon after the murders with the wife and mother of the two victims and she had gathered good intel on the family dynamic. Fresh out of pharmacy school, José Jr. was living at home but he was at odds with his parents over the livi
ng and working arrangements.
Lourdes was now writing on a second board and listing investigative leads and tasks that needed to be assigned and performed. Some she wrote in black ink and some in red. There were the autopsies and ballistics to cover. Video from the farmacia’s cameras going back thirty days prior to the murders was available and would take several hours to review. There were other pharmacy robberies in Los Angeles in recent years that needed to be reviewed for similarities.
“Why the red?” Bosch asked.
“High priority,” Lourdes said.
“What is MBC?”
She had written and underlined the letters in red, then drawn an arrow to her own initials. It was a lead she was going to handle.
“Medical Board of California,” Lourdes said. “I was in Junior’s room yesterday and found a letter from the MBC saying they were in receipt of his complaint and would be in contact after an investigator had reviewed it.”
“Okay,” Bosch said. “What makes it a priority?”
“A couple things. One is that he had the letter in his room in a drawer, like he was hiding it.”
“From who? His parents?”
“I don’t know yet. The other is that the mother gave up that Junior and his father had been fighting lately. She didn’t know what it was about but it was something to do with work. They weren’t talking at home. My hunch is it has something to do with the complaint he made to the medical board. It seems like it’s worth checking out.”
“I agree. Let me know what you get.”
The door opened and Sisto and Luzon entered, followed by Captain Trevino. They all had steaming mugs of coffee.
Trevino was midfifties, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a shaved head. He was in uniform, which was his routine but always seemed odd to Bosch because he was in charge of the detective bureau, where no one wore uniforms. It was known within the department that he was the heir apparent to the chief, but there was no sign that the chief, a lifelong resident of the town, was going anywhere. Bosch’s perception was that this left Trevino frustrated and he channeled it into being a stickler for rules and discipline.
“I’m going to sit in and update the chief after,” Trevino said. “He’s got a Business Leaders breakfast and needs to be there.”
In a small town like San Fernando, the chief had to be equal parts police administrator, politician, and community cheerleader. A double murder on one of the main business and community-gathering streets would be a hot topic, and Valdez would need to calm nerves and promote confidence in the investigation. In some ways that was as important as the investigation itself.
“No problem,” Bosch said.
He and Trevino had gotten off to a rough start when Bosch first came to the department. Based on Bosch’s history with the LAPD, the captain viewed Bosch as a loose cannon who had to be closely monitored. That didn’t work for Bosch, but things smoothed out some a year later when an investigation by Bosch and Lourdes identified and led to the arrest of a serial rapist who had been targeting women in the small city for over four years. The subsequent publicity created a groundswell of community support for the department, with Trevino receiving the lion’s share of credit as the man in charge of the detective squad. Since then, Trevino had been content to give Bosch free rein as he worked through the cold case files and evidence boxes in the city’s old jail. But Bosch sensed that suspicion remained and he knew that as soon as Trevino found out about the Borders situation, he would start whispering in the chief’s ear that Bosch had to go.
“Why don’t we start by looking at the video from the pharmacy?” Bosch said. “Not all of us have seen it. Then we can go around the room and summarize yesterday’s work so Captain Trevino can keep the chief up to speed. Bella?”
Lourdes picked up a remote and turned on one of the screens on the wall opposite the whiteboards. The video from the farmacia was already cued up because Bosch and Lourdes had watched it several times the night before, their last work before heading home.
There were three cameras in the farmacia, and the ceiling camera over the prescription counter offered the most complete recording of the murders. The five people in the war room watched silently as the video advanced in slow motion.
On the screen both José Esquivel and his son were behind the counter in the pharmacy section. They were setting up for the day, as the farmacia opened at ten o’clock each day except Sunday. José Sr. was at the counter, going through a plastic basket with several small white bags in it—packaged prescriptions waiting for pickup. José Jr. was standing at a computer at the end of the counter, apparently checking for new prescriptions sent by medical offices. There were no other employees in the store. It had been determined through interviews the day before that the father and son were the only full-time employees. There was a part-time employee who worked on the busiest days of the week or when one of the Esquivels was off, but she was not a pharmacist and she functioned primarily as a cashier.
At 10:14, according to the timer on the video, the front door of the pharmacy opened and two men entered, already with ski masks pulled down and holding their weapons with gloved hands at their sides. They didn’t run but walked quickly as they separated into two of the retail aisles and moved toward the counter at the rear of the store.
José Sr. looked up first and saw the man in an aisle leading directly toward his position. It could not be known from the camera angle if he realized there were two men. But he immediately moved to his right and pushed a forearm into his son’s side, shoving him away from the computer and alerting him to the approaching danger.
Though the video was silent, it was clear that José Sr. yelled something to his son. José Jr. then turned to his right toward the half door that led to the hallway and the rear exit. It appeared that he did not realize that this put him in the path of the man moving down the other aisle. José Jr. started to run into the hallway. The gunman emerged from the aisle and followed, both of them disappearing off camera into the rear of the pharmacy.
The other gunman continued without hesitation toward the counter and raised his weapon. José Sr. raised his hands palms out in surrender. The gunman extended the gun between Esquivel’s raised hands and shot him nearly point-blank in the chest, a through-and-through shot that tore into the cabinets behind him. José Sr. took a step back and bumped into the cabinets, then collapsed to the floor, his arms still extended up by his shoulders.
“Holy shit, that’s cold,” said Sisto, who had not seen the video previously.
No one responded. They watched in stunned silence.
Moments after Esquivel went down, the second gunman appeared in the doorway, coming from the rear hallway, presumably after shooting and killing José Jr. He moved to the counter and reached underneath to a white plastic trash can. He dumped its contents on the floor and then started moving among the drug cabinets, opening drawers and dumping the stores of pills and capsules into the trash can. The other gunman kept his eyes trained on the front door, two hands on his weapon and ready to use it. Bosch again realized how lucky it was that there had not been more victims—customers wandering into the store, not knowing the danger awaiting them. These killers were clearly not going to leave witnesses.
It could have been a massacre.
Ninety seconds after the gunmen had entered through the front door, they moved into the back hallway and disappeared for good, having gone out the rear exit.
“We think they must’ve had a car and driver in the alley,” Lourdes said. “Anybody want to see it again?”
“No, thanks,” Trevino said. “Any video from where the son got hit?”
“No, the rear hallway wasn’t covered by camera,” Lourdes said.
“What about the street?” Trevino pressed. “We have anything that shows those two bastards without masks on?”
“Nothing,” Luzon said. “There are cameras on both ends of the mall but they didn’t pick up shit.”
“We think they were dropped off in the al
ley and went in the back door of the Three Kings,” said Sisto, using the English name for the bar located two doors down from the pharmacy.
“They walked through the bar and out the front door,” Luzon said. “Then down to La Familia and pulled down their masks before going in.”
“They knew what they were doing,” Sisto added. “And where the cameras were.”
“We get descriptions out of the Kings?” Trevino asked.
“Not a very cooperative group in there, Captain,” Luzon said. “We got nothing other than the bartender saying he saw two guys walk through real quick. He said they were white and that’s about it.”
Trevino frowned. He knew full well that the Tres Reyes was the source of frequent patrol calls because of fighting, gambling, drunk and disorderly conduct, code violations, and other disruptive issues. The establishment was a sore spot on the mall, and the department had for years been under community pressure to do something about it. Chief Valdez routinely visited roll calls at the station and singled out the establishment for proactive enforcement, meaning he wanted patrol officers to walk through the bar several times a shift—a practice not welcomed by anyone on either side of the bar. Subsequently, the relations between the police and the bar’s management and clientele were not good. There would not be much help coming from the Tres Reyes on this case.
“Okay, what else?” Trevino asked. “This match up with any recent cases in the city?”
He meant Los Angeles. Most residents of San Fernando referred to it as the town and Los Angeles as the city.
“We have two similars,” Sisto said. “Both in the city. I’m getting details and video today. But the basics are the same—two white men in ski masks, driver waits outside. Only difference is, nobody got hurt in those. They were straight robberies—one in Encino and the other in West Hills.”
Bosch involuntarily shook his head and Trevino noticed.
“Not our suspects?” the captain asked.
“I don’t think so,” Bosch said. “I think our suspects wanted us to think that. But this was a hit.”