The Crossing (12 page)

“Maybe he didn’t trust you at first. Maybe he was taking your measure.”

“That’s just more bullshit. But it does make me wonder about you not telling me either. You had to take my measure, too?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I did it because I had to get you invested.”

“Invested? Bullshit. You used me.”

“Maybe. But maybe I saved you.”

“Saved me from what?”

“You’re a homicide investigator. The Los Angeles Police Department decided it didn’t need you anymore. There are places—people—that still do.”

Bosch shook his head and brought his hands up on the table.

“Why didn’t you just lay it out for me as it is, then let me make a choice?”

“What, you mean lay out for you that I had a guy accused of the most heinous murder this town’s seen since Nicole Simpson got butchered and that his DNA just happens to be inside the victim and he just happened to lie about his alibi because his real alibi was that he was shacked up in a motel room with a transvestite who goes by the name Sindy as in S-I-N Sindy? Yeah, I guess that would’ve worked if I’d played it that way.”

Bosch didn’t say anything because he sensed there was more. He was right.

“And here’s the kicker. That alibi, as crazy as it is, is impossible to prove now, because Sindy got himself murdered in an alley in Hollywood before I could get to him.”

Bosch leaned forward as his body tensed. Foster hadn’t told him that piece of information.

“When was this?” he asked.

“Back in March,” Haller said.

“Before or after Foster was arrested for Parks?”

“After.”

“How long after?”

“A few days, I think.”

Bosch thought about that for a moment before asking the next question.

“Anybody picked up for it?”

“I don’t know. Not as of the last time I checked. This is why I need an investigator, Harry. A homicide investigator. Cisco was just getting into it when he laid his bike down and fucked himself up.”

“You should’ve told me all of this.”

“I just did.”

“I should have known earlier.”

“Well, you know it all now. So are you in, or are you out?”

B
osch thought he would die soon. There was no physical or health threat that caused him to think this. He was actually in good shape for a man his age. He had worked a case years before in which a murder involved the theft of radioactive material. He had been exposed and treated, the twice-annual chest X-rays had been cut to annual checks in recent years and each time the film came back clear. It wasn’t that or anything else from the job he’d held for more than three decades.

It was his daughter who made him think this way. Bosch had been a step-in father. He didn’t know he had a child until she was almost four, and she didn’t come to live with him until she was thirteen. It had only been five years since then but he had come to believe that parents see their children not only as they are but as they hope they will be in the future. Happy, fulfilled, not afraid. When Maddie first came to live with him Bosch didn’t have this vision right away, but soon enough he earned it. When he closed his eyes at night, he saw her older: beautiful and confident, happy and healed. Not scared of anything.

Time had passed and his daughter had gotten to the age of that young woman in his vision. But the vision went no further. It didn’t grow older, and he believed this was because one of them would not be around to see it. He didn’t want it to be her so he believed it was he who would not be there.

When Bosch got home that evening he decided he had to tell his daughter what he was doing. Her bedroom door was closed. He texted her and asked her to come out for a few minutes to talk.

When she emerged from the room, she was already in her sleeping clothes.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Why?”

“I don’t know. It looks like you’re going to bed.”

“I just got ready. I want to go to bed early to stock up on my sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like hibernating. I doubt I’m going to get any sleep when we go camping.”

“You finish packing yet?”

“I have a few things left. So what’s up?”

“Are you going to eat dinner?”

“No, I’m trying to be healthy.”

Bosch knew this meant she had probably looked at herself in the mirror and, seeing something no one else could see, determined she had to lose weight.

“Skipping meals is not healthy, Maddie,” Bosch said.

“You should talk,” she said. “What about all the times on cases you didn’t eat?”

“That was because I couldn’t get food or didn’t have time. You could eat dinner and be healthy about it.”

She made her end-of-conversation face.

“Dad, let me do this. Is that all you wanted?”

Bosch frowned.

“Well, no,” he said. “I was going to tell you something about what I’m doing but I can tell you later.”

“No, tell me,” she said, eager to move on from discussing her eating habits.

Bosch nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, remember a while ago when we were talking about my work and how I thought what I did—the homicide work—was like a calling and how I could never work for a defense lawyer like your uncle?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Why?”

Bosch hesitated and then decided to just get it over with.

“Well, I wanted to tell you that Mickey came to me with a case,” he said. “A murder case. A case where he felt sure that the client was innocent and that he had been framed.”

He held there but she didn’t say anything.

“He asked me to look into the case,” he continued. “You know, to see if there was evidence that he was framed. And so … I’ve agreed to do that.”

Maddie stared at him for a long moment and then finally spoke.

“Who was murdered?” she asked.

“A woman,” Bosch said. “It was very brutal, awful.”

“You said you could never do this.”

“I know what I said. But with this case, I thought, if there is a possibility that this man didn’t do it, then somebody is still out there who did. And that bothers me—that somebody like this could be still out there in the world with you and everybody else. So I told Mickey today I would look into it. And I just thought you should know.”

She nodded and dropped her eyes from Bosch’s. That hurt him more than what she said next.

“Is he in jail?” she asked.

“Yes,” Bosch said. “Two months now.”

“So the opposite of what you’re saying is that you may be working to put a very bad person back out into the world with me and everybody else.”

“No, Mads, I wouldn’t do that. I’ll stop before that happens.”

“But how can you know for sure?”

“I guess nothing can be known for sure.”

She shook her head at that response.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

She turned from him and rounded the corner into the hallway.

“Come on, Mads. Don’t be like that. Let’s talk about it.”

He heard her bedroom door close and lock. He stood still and considered her response. He expected news of what he was doing to bring a large backlash from those he knew in law enforcement. But he hadn’t expected it from his daughter.

He decided that he, too, had no appetite for dinner.

B
osch got up early to review his notes and the reports in the murder book. He waited to call Lucia Soto at precisely twenty minutes after eight. He knew that if she had not deviated from her routine since she had served as his partner in the last few months of his LAPD career, then she would be walking to the Starbucks on First Street, a block from the PAB.

She answered right away.

“Soto.”

“Lucia.”

“Harry, what’s up?”

Bosch had the caller ID on his phone blocked, so she still recognized his voice or remembered that he was the only one who called her Lucia. Everybody else called her Lucy or Lucky or Lucky Lucy, none of which she cared for.

“You going to get coffee?”

“You know me. It’s good to hear from you. How’s retired life?”

“Not so retiring, it turns out. I was wondering if you might do me a favor when you get back to the squad with your latte.”

“Sure, Harry, what do you need?”

“Before I tell you, I want to be up front with you. I am looking into a case for my half brother.”

“The defense lawyer.”

“Yeah, the defense lawyer.”

“And he’s also the guy you’re using to sue the department.”

“That’s right.”

Bosch waited and there was a long pause before Soto responded.

“Okay. So what do you need?”

Bosch smiled. He knew he could count on her.

“I don’t need your help on the specific case I’m working but there is another case that I heard about that might be related in some way. I just need to get a line on it, find out what it is.”

He paused to give her a chance to shut it down but she said nothing. So far so good, Bosch thought. He’d had no doubt that she would do the favor for him but he didn’t want her to feel compromised or fear that he might put her in any departmental crosshairs. They had only talked a few times since he had walked out the door of the Open-Unsolved Unit the year before, never to return. When he had checked in with her after the first of the year to see how she was doing, he learned that she had already been hit with some of the blowback from his departure.

The captain of the unit had partnered her with a veteran detective named Stanley O’Shaughnessy. Known as Stanley the Steamer by most of the other detectives in the Robbery-Homicide Division, O’Shaughnessy was the worst kind of partner to be saddled with. He didn’t work hard at solving murders but was very active when it came to discussing what was wrong with the department and filing complaints against other detectives and supervisors who he felt had slighted him. He was a man who let his frustrations and disappointments with his life and career paralyze him. Consequently, his partners never stayed with him for long unless they had no choice in the matter. Soto, being the low man on the totem pole in RHD, would probably be stuck with Stanley the Steamer until the next round of promotions brought new blood into the division, and that was only if a new detective coming in had less seniority than her. Since Soto had been on the job less than eight years, the chances of that were almost nonexistent. She was stuck and she knew it. She spent her days largely working cases on her own and only bringing in O’Shaughnessy when department policy required two partners on an excursion.

All of this had been accorded her because she had been Harry Bosch’s partner for the last four months of his career and had refused to rat him out in an Internal Affairs investigation prompted by the same captain who handed out the partner assignments. When she had told Bosch how she had landed, all he could do was encourage her to leave O’Shaughnessy behind and go out and work cases, knock on doors. She did that and called Bosch a few times to tap into his experience and ask his advice. He had been happy to give it. It had been a one-way road like that until now.

“Do you know the murder journals in the captain’s office?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“I’m looking for a case. I don’t have a name or an exact date, only that it was in Hollywood and probably took place within a week after March nineteenth this year.”

“Okay, but why don’t I just look it up on CTS and do it real quick?”

CTS was the LAPD’s internal Crime Tracking System, which she could access from her computer. But to access it she would have to sign in with her user key.

“No, don’t go on CTS,” Bosch said. “I have no idea where this will go, so just to be safe, don’t leave any digital fingerprints.”

“Okay, got it. Anything else?”

“I don’t know if it will be in the journal but the victim was a prostitute. Might be listed as a dragon or a tranny or something like that. The street name was Sindy, spelled S-I-N-D-Y, and that’s all I got.”

In the age of electronic data compilation and storage, the LAPD still kept a tradition of logging every murder in a leather-bound journal. The journals had been religiously kept since September 9, 1899, when a man named Simon Christenson was found dead on a downtown railroad bridge—the first recorded murder in the LAPD’s history. Detectives at the time believed Christenson had been beaten to death and then placed on the tracks so a train would hit his body and the killing would look like a suicide. It was a misdirection that didn’t work, yet no one was ever charged with the murder.

Bosch had read through the journals regularly when he worked in RHD. It was a hobby of sorts, to read the paragraph or two written about every murder that had been recorded. He had committed Christenson’s name to memory. Not because it was the first murder, but because it was the first
and
it was never solved. It always bothered Bosch that there had been no justice for Simon Christenson.

“What do I tell the captain?” Soto asked. “He’ll probably ask me why I’m looking at that case.”

Bosch had anticipated the question before he made the call to her.

“Don’t tell him you’re looking at a specific case,” he said. “Pull the latest journal and tell him you’re just trying to keep up with what’s going on out there. A lot of guys check those books out. I read through every one of them at least once.”

“Okay, got it. Let me get my coffee now, and then I’ll go back up and do it first thing.”

“Thanks, Lucia.”

Bosch disconnected and thought about next steps. If Lucia came through, then he’d have a starting point on the Sindy case. He might be able to determine if there was any link to Lexi Parks and whether Da’Quan Foster’s alibi was for real.

While Bosch waited for the callback from Soto, his daughter emerged from her bedroom dressed for school, her backpack slung over a shoulder.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m late.”

She grabbed her car keys off the table by the front door. Bosch got up from the table to follow her.

“Not going to eat again?” he asked.