Echo Park (9 page)

“I think I have at least another hour before I should be thinking about getting home.”

Bosch turned to look at her and she smiled.

10

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Bosch and Rider walked from the Hall of Records to the CCB and despite the wait for an elevator still got to the DA’s office twenty minutes early. O’Shea and Olivas were ready for them. Everyone took the same seats as before. Bosch noticed that the posters that had been leaning against the wall were gone. They had probably been put to good use somewhere, maybe sent to the public hall where the candidates’ forum was scheduled for that night.

As he sat down Bosch saw the Gesto murder book on O’Shea’s desk. He took it without asking and immediately opened it to the chronological record. He combed through the 51s until he found the page for September 29, 1993. He looked at the entry Olivas had told him about the evening before. It was, as it had been read to Bosch, the last entry of the day. Bosch felt the deep sense of regret tug at him all over again.

“Detective Bosch, we all make mistakes,” O’Shea said. “Let’s just move on from it and do the best we can today.”

Bosch looked up at him and eventually nodded. He closed the book and put it back on the desk. O’Shea continued.

“I am told that Maury Swann is in the interview room with Mr. Waits and is ready to go. I have been thinking about this and I want to take the cases one at a time and in order. We start with Fitzpatrick and when we are satisfied by the confession, we move on to the Gesto case, and when we are satisfied there, we move on to the next one and so on.”

Everybody nodded except for Bosch.

“I am not going to be satisfied until we have her remains,” he said.

Now O’Shea nodded. He lifted a document off his desk.

“I understand that. If you can locate the victim based on the statements from Waits, then fine. If it is a matter of him leading us to the body, I have a release order ready to go to the judge. I would say that if we reach a point where we are taking this man out of lockup, then the security should be extraordinary. There will be a lot riding on this and we cannot have any mistakes.”

O’Shea took the time to look from detective to detective to make sure they understood the gravity of the situation. He would be gambling his campaign and political life on the security of Raynard Waits.

“We’ll be ready for anything,” Olivas said.

The look of concern on O’Shea’s face didn’t change.

“You’re going to have a uniformed presence, right?” he asked.

“I don’t think it is necessary—uniforms draw attention,” Olivas said. “We can handle him. But if you want it we’ll have it.”

“I think it would be good to have, yes.”

“No problem, then. We’ll either get a car from Metro to go with us or a couple deputies from the jail.”

O’Shea nodded his approval.

“Then, are we ready to start?”

“There’s one thing,” Bosch said. “We’re not sure who that is in the interview room waiting for us, but we’re pretty sure his name isn’t Raynard Waits.”

A look of surprise played off O’Shea’s face and immediately became contagious. Olivas dropped his mouth open an inch and leaned forward.

“We made him on fingerprints,” Olivas protested. “On the prior.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yes, the prior. As you know, when he was popped thirteen years ago for prowling, he first gave the name Robert Saxon along with the birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-five. This is the same name he used later that year when he called about Gesto, only then he gave the birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-one. But when he was pulled in on the prowling and they ran his prints through the computer, they matched the thumb to the DL of Raynard Waits, with a birth date of eleven/three/’seventy-one. So we keep getting the same month and day but different years. Anyway, when confronted with the thumbprint he copped to being Raynard Waits, saying he had given the false name and year because he was hoping to be handled as a juvenile. This is all in the file.”

“But where does all of it go?” O’Shea said impatiently.

“Just let me finish. He got probation for the prowling because it was a first offense. In the probation report bio he said he was born and raised in L.A., okay? We just came from the Hall of Records. There is no record of Raynard Waits being born in L.A. on that date or any other. There have been a lot of Robert Saxons born in L.A. but none on November third of either of the years mentioned in the files.”

“The bottom line,” Rider said, “is we don’t know who the man we are about to talk to is.”

O’Shea pushed back from his desk and stood up. He paced around the spacious office as he thought and spoke about this latest information.

“Okay, so what are you saying, that the DMV had the wrong prints on file or there was some sort of a mix-up?”

Bosch turned in his seat so he could look at O’Shea while he answered.

“I’m saying that this guy, whoever he really is, could have gone to the DMV thirteen, fourteen, years ago to set up a false ID. What do you need to get a driver’s license? Proof of age. Back then, you could buy phony IDs and birth certificates on Hollywood Boulevard, no problem. Or he could have bribed a DMV employee, could have done a lot of things. The point is, there is no record of him being born here in L.A., as he said he was. That puts all the rest in doubt.”

“Maybe that’s the lie,” Olivas said. “Maybe he
is
Waits and he lied about being born here. It’s like when you’re born out in Riverside, you tell everybody you’re from L.A.”

Bosch shook his head. He didn’t accept the logic Olivas was slinging.

“The name is false,” Bosch insisted. “Raynard is a take on a character from medieval folklore known as Reynard the Fox. It’s spelled with an
e
but it’s pronounced the same. Put that with the last name and you have ‘the little fox waits.’ Get it? You can’t convince me somebody gave him that name at birth.”

That brought a momentary silence to the room.

“I don’t know,” O’Shea said, thinking out loud. “Seems a little far-fetched, this medieval connection.”

“It’s only far-fetched because we can’t nail it down,” Bosch countered. “You ask me, it’s more far-fetched that this would be his given name.”

“So what are you saying?” Olivas asked. “That he changed his name and continued to use it, even after he had an arrest tail on it? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, either. But we don’t know the story behind it yet.”

“Okay, so what are you suggesting we do?” O’Shea asked.

“Not much,” Bosch said. “I’m just bringing it up. But I do think we ought to go on the record with it up there. You know, ask him to state his name, DOB, and place of birth. As if it is the routine way to start one of these interviews. If he gives us Waits, then we might be able to catch him in the lie down the road and prosecute him for everything. You said that was the deal; if he lies, he fries. We can turn it all against him.”

O’Shea was standing by the coffee table behind where Bosch and Rider sat. Bosch turned again, to watch him take in the suggestion. The prosecutor was grinding it over and nodding.

“I don’t see where it could hurt,” he finally said. “Just get it on the record but let it go at that. Real subtle and routine. We can come back to him on it later—if we find out more about this.”

Bosch looked at Rider.

“You’ll be the one starting out with him, asking about the first case. Your first question can be about his name.”

“Fine,” she said.

O’Shea came back around the desk.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Are we ready? It’s time to go. I will try to stay with it as long as my schedule allows. Don’t be offended if I jump in from time to time with a question.”

Bosch answered by standing up. Rider followed suit and then Olivas.

“One last thing,” Bosch said. “We picked up a Maury Swann story yesterday that maybe you guys ought to know.”

Both Bosch and Rider took turns telling the story Abel Pratt had told them. By the end, Olivas was laughing and shaking his head and Bosch could tell by O’Shea’s face that he was trying to count how many times he had shaken Maury Swann’s hand in court. Maybe he was worrying about potential political fallout.

Bosch headed to the door of the office. He felt a mixture of excitement and dread rising. He was excited because he knew he was finally about to find out what had happened to Marie Gesto so long ago. At the same time, he dreaded finding out. And he dreaded the fact that the details he would soon learn would place a heavy burden on him. A burden he would have to transfer to a waiting mother and father up in Bakersfield.

11

T
WO UNIFORMED SHERIFF’S DEPUTIES
stood at the door to the interview room in which sat the man who called himself Raynard Waits. They stepped aside and allowed the prosecutorial entourage to enter. The room contained one long table. Waits and his defense attorney, Maury Swann, were sitting on one side of it. Waits was directly in the middle and Swann was to his left. When the investigators and the prosecutor entered, only Maury Swann stood. Waits was held to the arms of his chair with plastic snap cuffs. Swann, a thin man with black-framed glasses and a luxurious mane of silver hair, offered his hand but no one shook it.

Rider took the chair directly across the table from Waits, and Bosch and O’Shea sat on either side of her. Since Olivas would not be up in the interview rotation for some time, he took the last remaining chair, which was next to the door.

O’Shea handled the introductions but again nobody bothered shaking anybody else’s hand. Waits was in an orange jumpsuit that had black letters stenciled across the chest.

L.A. COUNTY JAIL

KEEP AWAY

The second line was not intended as a warning but it was just as good as one. It meant that Waits was on keep-away status within the jail, indicating he was housed by himself and not allowed into the general inmate population. This status was taken as a protective measure for both Waits and the other inmates.

As Bosch studied the man he had been hunting for thirteen years he realized that the most frightening thing about Waits was how ordinary he looked. Slightly built, he had an everyman’s face. Pleasant, with soft features and short dark hair, he was the epitome of normality. The only hint of the evil that lay within was found in the eyes. Dark brown and deeply set, they carried an emptiness that Bosch recognized from other killers he had sat face-to-face with over the years. Nothing there. Just a hollowness that could never be filled, no matter how many other lives he stole.

Rider turned on the tape recorder that was on the table and started the interview perfectly, giving Waits no reason to suspect he was stepping into a trap with the very first question of the session.

“As was probably explained to you already by Mr. Swann, we are going to record each session with you and then turn the tapes over to your attorney, who will hold them until we have a completed agreement. Is that understood and approved by you?”

“Yes, it is,” Waits said.

“Good,” Rider said. “Then let’s begin with an easy one. Can you state your name, birth date and place of birth for the record?”

Waits leaned forward and made a face like he was stating the obvious to schoolchildren.

“Raynard Waits,” he said impatiently. “Born November third, nineteen seventy-one, in the city of angles—oh, I mean angels. The city of angels.”

“If you mean Los Angeles, could you please say it?”

“Yes, Los Angeles.”

“Thank you. Your first name is unusual. Could you spell it for the tape?”

Waits complied. Again, it was a good move by Rider. It would make it even more difficult for the man in front of them to argue later that he had not knowingly lied during the interview.

“Do you know where the name came from?”

“My father pulled it out of his ass, I guess. I don’t know. I thought we were here to talk about dead people, not the piddly basic shit.”

“We are, Mr. Waits. We are.”

Bosch felt an enormous sense of relief inside. He knew that they were about to sit through a retelling of horrors but he felt they already had Waits caught in a lie that might spring a fatal trap on him. There was now a chance that he was not going to walk away from this to a private cell and a life of public maintenance and celebrity.

“We want to take these in order,” Rider said. “Your attorney’s proffer suggests that the first homicide you were ever involved in was the death of Daniel Fitzpatrick in Hollywood on April thirtieth, nineteen ninety-two. Is that correct?”

Waits answered with the sort of matter-of-fact demeanor one would expect from someone giving directions to the nearest gas station. His voice was cold and calm.

“Yes, I burned him alive behind his security cage. It turned out that he wasn’t so secure back there. Not even with all of his guns.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to see if I could. I had been thinking about it for a long time and I just wanted to prove myself.”

Bosch thought about what Rachel Walling had said to him the night before. She had called it a “spree killing.” It looked like she had been right.

“What do you mean by ‘prove yourself,’ Mr. Waits?” Rider asked.

“I mean there is a line out there that everybody thinks about but not many have the guts to cross. I wanted to see if I could cross it.”

“When you say you had been thinking about it for a long time, had you been thinking about Mr. Fitzpatrick in particular?”

Annoyance flared in Waits’s eyes. It was as if he were putting up with her.

“No, you stupid cunt,” he replied calmly. “I had been thinking about killing someone. You understand? All my life I had wanted to do it.”

Rider shook off the insult without a flinch and kept moving.

“Why did you choose Daniel Fitzpatrick? Why did you choose that night?”

“Well, because I was watching TV and I saw the whole city coming apart. It was chaos out there and I knew the police couldn’t do anything about it. It was a time when people were doing just what they wanted. I saw a guy on the tube talking about Hollywood Boulevard and how places were burning and I decided to go out to see it. I didn’t want the TV showing it to me. I wanted to see it for myself.”

“Did you drive there?”

“No, I could walk. Back then I lived on Fountain near LaBrea. I just walked up.”

Rider had the Fitzpatrick file open in front of her. She glanced down at it for a moment while collecting her thoughts and formulating the next set of questions. That gave O’Shea the opportunity to jump in.

“Where did the lighter fluid come from?” he asked. “Did you take it with you from your apartment?”

Waits shifted his focus to O’Shea.

“I thought the dyke was asking the questions,” he said.

“We’re all asking the questions,” O’Shea said. “And could you please keep the personal attacks out of your responses?”

“Not you, Mr. District Attorney. I don’t want to talk to you. Only her. And them.”

He pointed to Bosch and Olivas.

“Let me just back up a little bit before we get to the lighter fluid,” Rider said, smoothly pushing O’Shea to the side. “You said you walked up to Hollywood Boulevard from Fountain. Where did you go and what did you see?”

Waits smiled and nodded at Rider.

“I got that right, didn’t I?” he said. “I can always tell. I can always smell it on a woman, when she likes pussy.”

“Mr. Swann,” Rider said, “can you please tell your client that this is about him answering our questions, not the other way around?”

Swann put his hand on Waits’s left forearm, which was bound to the arm of his chair.

“Ray,” he said. “Don’t play games. Just answer the questions. Remember, we want this. We brought it to them. It’s our show.”

Bosch saw a slow burn move across Waits’s face as he turned and looked at his lawyer. But then it quickly disappeared and he looked back at Rider.

“I saw the city burning, that’s what I saw.”

He smiled after giving the answer.

“It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting.”

He turned to Bosch as he said this. It froze Bosch for a moment. How did he know?

Waits nodded toward Bosch’s chest.

“It’s on your ID card.”

Bosch had forgotten that they’d had to clip their IDs on once they entered the DA’s office. Rider moved in quickly with the next question.

“Okay, which way did you walk once you got to Hollywood Boulevard?”

“I took a right and headed east. The bigger fires were down that way.”

“What was in your pockets?”

The question seemed to give him pause.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. My keys, I guess. Cigarettes and a lighter, that was all.”

“Did you have your wallet?”

“No, I didn’t want to have ID with me. In case the police stopped me.”

“Did you already have the lighter fluid with you?”

“That’s right, I did. I thought I might join in the fun, help burn the city to the ground. Then I walked by that pawnshop and got a better idea.”

“You saw Mr. Fitzpatrick?”

“Yeah, I saw him. He was standing inside his security fence holding a shotgun. He also was wearing a holster like he was Wyatt Earp or something.”

“Describe the pawnshop.”

Waits shrugged.

“A small place. It was called Irish Pawn. It had this neon sign out front that flashed a green three-leaf clover and then the three balls, you know, that are like the symbol for a pawnshop, I guess. Fitzpatrick was standing there, watching me when I passed by.”

“And you kept walking?”

“At first I did. I passed by and then I thought about the challenge, you know? How could I get to him without getting shot by that big fucking bazooka he was holding.”

“What did you do?”

“I took the can of EasyLight out of my jacket pocket and filled my mouth with it. Squirted it right in, like those flame breathers do on the Venice boardwalk. I then put the can away and got out a cigarette and my lighter. I don’t smoke anymore. It’s a terrible habit.”

He looked at Bosch as he said this.

“Then what?” Rider asked.

“I went back to the asshole’s shop and walked into the alcove in front of the security fence. I acted like I was just looking for a blind to try to light my smoke. It was windy that night, you understand?”

“Yes.”

“So he started yelling at me to get the fuck away. He came right up to the fence to yell at me. And I was counting on that.”

He smiled, proud of how well his plan worked.

“The guy hit the stock of his shotty against the steel fence to get my attention. You see, he saw my hands, so he didn’t realize the danger. And when he was about two feet away I got a flame on the lighter and looked him right in the eyes. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and spit all of that lighter fluid into his face. Of course, it hit the lighter on the way and I was a fucking flamethrower. He had a face full a’ flames before he knew what hit him. He dropped the shotty pretty fast so he could try to slap at the flames. But his clothes went up and pretty soon he was one crispy critter. It was like being hit by napalm, man.”

Waits tried to raise his left arm but couldn’t. It was bound to the armrest at the wrist. He turned and raised his hand instead.

“Unfortunately, I burned my hand a little bit. Blisters, the whole thing. It really hurt, too. I can’t imagine what that asshole Wyatt Earp felt. Not a good way to go, if you ask me.”

Bosch looked at the upraised hand. He saw a discoloration in the skin tone, but not a scar. The burn had not gone deep.

After a long measure of silence, Rider asked another question.

“Did you seek medical attention for your hand?”

“No, I didn’t think that would be too smart, considering the situation. And from what I heard, the hospitals were overflowing. So I went on home and took care of it myself.”

“When did you place the can of lighter fluid in front of the store?”

“Oh, that was when I was walking away. I just took it out, wiped it off and put it down.”

“Did Mr. Fitzpatrick call out for help at any time?”

Waits paused as if to ponder the question.

“Well, that’s hard to say. He was yelling something, but I am not sure it was for help. He just kind of sounded like an animal to me. I closed the door on my dog’s tail once when I was kid. It sort of reminded me of that.”

“What were you thinking as you were walking home?”

“I was thinking, Far-fucking-out! I finally did it! And I knew I was going to get away with it, too. I felt like I was pretty goddamn invincible, if you want to know the truth.”

“How old were you?”

“I was . . . I was twenty, man, and I fuckin’ did it!”

“Did you ever think about the man you killed, who you burned to death?”

“No, not really. He was just there. There for the taking. Like the rest of them that came after. It was like they were there for me.”

Rider spent another forty minutes questioning him, eliciting smaller details that nonetheless matched those contained in the investigative reports. Finally, at 11:15 she seemed to relax her posture and pull back from her place at the table. She turned to look at Bosch and then at O’Shea.

“I think I have enough for the moment,” she said. “Maybe we could take a short break at this point.”

She turned off the tape recorder, and the three investigators and O’Shea stepped out into the hallway to confer. Swann stayed in the interview room with his client.

“What do you think?” O’Shea said to Rider.

She nodded.

“I’m satisfied. I don’t think there is any doubt that he did it. He solved the mystery of how he got to him. I don’t think he’s telling us everything but he knows enough of the details. He either did it or he was right there.”

O’Shea looked at Bosch.

“Should we move on?”

Bosch thought about this for a moment. He was ready. As he had watched Rider interview Waits his anger and disgust had grown. The man in the interview room showed such a callous disregard for his victim that Bosch recognized it as the classic profile of a psychopath. As before, he dreaded what he would next hear from the man but he was ready to hear it.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

They all moved back into the interview room and Swann immediately suggested that they break for lunch.

“My client is hungry.”

“Gotta feed the dog,” Waits added with a smile.

Bosch shook his head, taking charge of the room.

“Not yet,” he said. “He’ll eat when we all eat.”

He took the seat directly across from Waits and turned the recorder back on. Rider and O’Shea took the wing positions and Olivas sat once again in the chair by the door. Bosch had taken the Gesto file back from Olivas but had it closed in front of him on the table.