The Crossing (37 page)

“Okay.”

“I’m pretty sure Ellis and Long were using it back in March when Allen got dumped in that alley.”

“The trunk?”

Bosch nodded.

“I’ll order a full forensic workup,” she said.

“You get something, send a copy of the report to that asshole Cornell.”

Bosch could see Mendenhall smile in the glow from the dash lights. They drove in silence for a while. She made the turn onto Mulholland and started east. When she spoke, it had nothing to do with the case at hand.

“Harry, I’m curious. Why didn’t you call me after Modesto?”

Bosch was caught off guard.

“That’s a curve ball,” he managed to say while trying to formulate an answer.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” she said. “It’s just that I thought we had a connection when we were up there. Modesto. I thought you might call.”

“Well, I just thought … you know, that with you being in IAD and me being investigated, it would have been uncool to follow up on anything. That could end up with you being the one investigated.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything. Bosch looked over at her and couldn’t read her reaction.

“Forget it,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Very unprofessional. Keep asking your questions.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, what is the current thinking on Ellis and his whereabouts?”

“The current thinking is Mexico,” she said. “He probably had a getaway package ready to go. Car, money, probably multiple IDs. He lived alone and it looks like he never went back after he left Schubert’s office.”

“He’s in the wind.”

She nodded.

“He could be anywhere.”

E
llis waited in darkness, his face a dim shade of blue cast by the light of a phone screen. He waited to take care of the last detail before his exit. His final touch and statement on this place that had changed him in so many ways.

He checked his news feed and reread the story. It contained the slimmest grouping of facts and had not been updated in at least two hours. He knew it was all that would be released tonight. The press conference had been scheduled for the morning, when the sheriff and chief of police would share a podium and address the media together. Ellis considered sticking around to watch it live on local TV, to see how the chief tried to spin it. But his survival instinct overrode that desire. He knew that the hours in between would be best used to put distance between himself and the city. This ugly city that hollows people, corrodes them from the inside out.

Besides, he would get everything on the news feed. The story would no doubt break big and national. Especially after they found Bosch. And after they found the twins.

He thought about the twins. They had not been watching the news. They knew nothing and expected nothing but the usual from him. Even when they saw the weapon in his hand, they believed he was there to protect them from some outside threat. They died thinking that.

He opened the photo app on the phone and went to the archives. He had taken three shots of the twins in final repose. But he realized it was impossible to tell that they were dead in these photos. Their faces had been so sculpted and stretched and reshaped by surgeries as to look frozen in both life and death.

After a while he went back to the news feed once more. Still nothing new on the events in Schubert’s office. There wasn’t even an update on Long’s medical status. All that had been reported so far was that he was alive and being treated at Cedars, where he was listed in critical condition.

Long’s name had not been put out publicly. The stories just said he was an LAPD vice officer who was off duty at the time of the shooting. No explanation was offered for what he was doing at the plastic surgery center where the events occurred.

There was no mention of Ellis either. No word that they were looking for him or that he had even been at the site. All of that would come in the morning when the chief of police stood before the media and tried to put the spin on another story of cops gone wrong.

Ellis wondered how much time he would have before Long started talking. He had no doubt that it would happen eventually. Long was the weak one. He could be manipulated. That was why Ellis had chosen him. But now the others would manipulate him. The investigators. The interrogators. The attorneys. They would squeeze him, break him down, and then finally give him a glimpse of light, and he would go for it. It would be a false light but he would not know that.

Once more Ellis reviewed his situation. Had he ever made any mention to Long about his exit strategy? The getaway plan was only as good as its self-containment. It only worked if just one person knew the plan, and once more Ellis reassured himself that Long knew nothing. He was safe.

A
fter being dropped off in front of his house, Bosch went into the carport to the Cherokee. Sutton had kept the keys to Bosch’s rental car but not the ring that had his house and personal car keys on it. He quietly unlocked the Jeep’s front door and leaned in behind the wheel. He reached under the driver’s seat and then up into the springs. His hand found the grip of the Kimber Ultra Carry. He brought it out and checked the action and the magazine. It had served as his backup gun for the last decade of his LAPD career. He put a bullet into the chamber and was good to go.

From a low crouch he unlocked the kitchen door and pushed it open. As it swung into the house, he raised his weapon but was greeted with only a still darkness. He reached up and in and flicked the double switches on the inside wall. The lights in the galley kitchen as well as the hallway beyond came on.

Bosch advanced through the kitchen and flicked the same lights off when he got to the opposite end. He didn’t want to be illuminated as he stepped into the hallway and farther into the house.

Bosch moved slowly and cautiously through his home, lighting rooms as he searched them. There was no sign of Ellis. When he got to the last room—his daughter’s bedroom—he turned around and cleared every room and closet again.

Satisfied that his hunch that Ellis might make a move against him was wrong, Bosch started to relax. He turned on the lights in the living room and went to the stereo. He hit the power button and put the needle down on the album already on the turntable. He didn’t even look to see what it was.

He put his gun down on the stereo receiver and, stripping his jacket off, tossed it over to the couch. He was dead tired from the long and strenuous day but too keyed up for sleep. The first strains of trumpet rose from the speakers and Bosch knew it was Wynton Marsalis playing “The Majesty of the Blues,” an old one he had picked up recently on vinyl. The song seemed appropriate to the moment. He opened the slider and stepped out onto the back deck.

He went to the railing and exhaled deeply. The night air was crisp and carried the scent of eucalyptus. Bosch checked his watch and decided it was too late to call Haller and update him. He’d make contact in the morning, probably after seeing how the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department played things out at the press conference that was sure to be scheduled. What the sheriff and chief of police said would surely dictate Haller’s strategy.

He leaned down, put his elbows on the railing, and looked at the freeway at the bottom of the pass. It was after midnight and yet the traffic persisted in both directions. It was always that way. Bosch was unsure that he would ever be able to sleep comfortably in a house without the background sound of the freeway from below.

He realized that he should have entered the house the way his daughter always did after school. That is, immediately stopping at the refrigerator upon entering through the kitchen door. In his case a nice cold beer would have tasted perfect right about now.

He heard the voice behind him before he heard anything else.

“Bosch.”

He turned slowly, and there was a figure shrouded in the darkness of the back corner of the deck, where even the faint moonlight was blocked by the roof’s eave. Bosch realized he had walked right past him when he stepped onto the deck. The shadows in the corner were too deep to see a face but he knew the voice.

“Ellis,” Bosch said. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

The figure stepped forward. First the pointed gun entered the dim moonlight, then Ellis. Bosch looked past him into the living room where he could see the Kimber left on the stereo receiver. It would do him no good now.

“What do you think I want?” Ellis said. “Did you think I would just run without paying you a visit?”

“I didn’t think you were that stupid,” Bosch said. “I thought you were the smart one.”

“Stupid? I’m not the one who came home alone.”

“You should have gone to Mexico while you had the head start.”

“Mexico is so obvious, Bosch. I have other plans. Just have to finish up a little bit of business here.”

“That’s right, you’re a no-loose-ends sort of guy.”

“I couldn’t risk that you wouldn’t give it up. We checked you out, Bosch. Retired and relentless are two things that don’t mesh together very well. I couldn’t risk that you’d keep looking for me. The department will give it up. Bringing me back for trial is not something that’s going to make anybody’s priority list at the PAB. But you … I figured I needed to end it right here before going.”

Ellis took another step toward Bosch, closing the distance for the shot. He fully emerged from the darkness. Bosch could see his face. The skin was drawn tight around eyes that had a wet glint at their black center. Bosch realized it might be the last face he ever saw.

“Going where?” he asked.

Harry raised his hands slowly, out to his sides, as if to underscore his vulnerability. To let Ellis know he had won and allow him the moment.

There was a pause and then Ellis answered.

“Belize. There’s a beach there. And a place I can’t be traced to.”

Bosch knew then that he had a chance. Ellis wanted to talk, to gloat, even.

“Tell me about Alexandra Parks,” he said.

Ellis smirked. He knew Bosch’s play.

“I don’t think I want to give you that,” he said. “You need to take that one with you.”

Ellis calibrated the aim of his weapon, bringing the muzzle up in case Bosch was wearing a vest. From this close he couldn’t miss with a face shot.

Bosch looked over his killer’s shoulder once more into the living room and at the gun he had left behind. A fatal mistake.

Then he saw movement in the house. Mendenhall was in the living room, moving toward the open door of the deck. Between the music inside and the freeway outside, Ellis would not hear her. She was closing on him, gun raised in a two-handed grip and ready.

Bosch looked at Ellis.

“Then let me ask you something else,” he said. “You and Long watched me. You know about my daughter. What would have happened if she were here tonight when you came?”

Bosch could see a smile form in the shadows of his killer’s face.

“What would have happened is she would have been dead before you got here,” Ellis said. “I would’ve let you find her.”

Bosch held his eyes. He thought of the crime scene photos of Alexandra Parks. The brutality inflicted on her. He wanted to make a move toward Ellis, to go for his throat. But he would be expecting that.

Instead, he stood still. He saw that Mendenhall was on the threshold between the house and the deck. He knew that as soon as she stepped onto one of the wooden planks, Ellis would know she was there. Bosch slightly changed his stance to try to cover her advance.

“Why don’t you just do it now?” he said.

Mendenhall took the last two steps up behind Ellis and then, without pause, there was the sharp sound of a shot that seemed to echo right through Bosch’s chest.

Ellis dropped to the deck without firing a shot. Bosch felt a fine mist of blood hit him full in the face.

For a moment he and Mendenhall stood there facing each other. Then Mendenhall dropped to her knees next to Ellis and quickly cuffed his hands behind his back, following policy and procedure even though it was clear he was not a threat to anyone. She then took out her phone and hit a speed-dial number. While she waited for the call to go through, she looked up at Bosch, who had not moved more than an inch since Ellis had pointed the gun at him.

“You okay?” she asked. “I was worried about a through-and-through shot hitting you.”

Bosch bent over for a moment, putting his hands on his knees.

“I’m good,” Bosch said. “That was close. I was seeing the end of things, you know what I mean?”

“I think so,” Mendenhall said.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Uh, how about you go in and find a seat. Let’s keep the deck clear. I’m calling everybody out.”

Just then her call was answered and she identified herself and gave the house’s address. In a voice as calm as the one she’d use to order a pizza, she asked for a rescue ambulance and a supervisor. She stressed that the scene was secured and then disconnected. Bosch knew she had been talking to the communications center and had been circumspect in the details she offered because she didn’t want to draw the media. There were police scanners in every newsroom in the city.

Mendenhall next made a call to her boss, Ellington, and informed him in more detail of what had just occurred. When she was finished with that call she came inside the house to where Bosch was sitting on the couch in the living room.

“You turned off the music,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought I should,” he said.

“What was that?”

“Wynton Marsalis. ‘The Majesty of the Blues.’”

“It covered me, you know. Ellis didn’t hear me come up on him.”

“If I ever meet Wynton, I’ll thank him. That’s twice now, you know.”

“What’s twice?”

“That you’ve saved my life.”

She shrugged.

“To protect and serve—you know the deal.”

“It’s more than that. What made you come back?”

“Your tip about the burnt-orange Camaro. There’s one parked around the bend. I go by it on my way down the hill and think,
That’s him, he’s waiting for Bosch
. So I came back.”