Authors: Michael Connelly
18
T
HEY PUT ME IN AN RV and told me to make myself at home. There was a kitchen and a table and a sitting area. There was a window but the view was of the side of another RV. The air-conditioning was on and that kept the smell out for the most part. When I asked questions they hadn’t answered them. They told me that other agents were coming soon to speak to me.
An hour went by and it gave me time to think about what I had stumbled into. There was no doubt that this was a body recovery site. The smell, that unmistakable smell, was in the air. Besides that, I had seen two unmarked vans with no windows on the sides or back. That told me something right there. Body movers. And there was more than one body to be moved.
At the ninety-minute mark I was sitting on the couch reading a month-old FBI
Bulletin
I had picked up off the coffee table. I heard a helicopter fly over the RV and then its turbines rev down and quit after it landed. Five minutes later the RV’s door opened and the agents I had been waiting for came in. Two women and a man. One of the women I recognized right off but I couldn’t place from where. She was late thirties, tall and pretty with dark hair. There was a deadness in her eyes that I had seen before, too. She was an agent and that meant there could have been a lot of places where our paths had crossed.
“Mr. Bosch?” said the other woman, the one in charge. “I’m Special Agent Cherie Dei. This is my partner, Tom Zigo, and this is Agent Walling. Thank you for waiting for us.”
“Oh, I had a choice? I didn’t realize that.”
“Of course. I hope they didn’t tell you that you had to stay.”
She smiled disingenuously. I decided not to argue the point and get things off to a bad start.
“Do you mind if we move into the kitchen and sit at the table?” Dei asked. “I think it will be best to talk there.”
I shrugged like it didn’t matter but I knew it did. They were going to sit me down and then corner me, one sitting across from me and then one on either side. I got up and took the seat I knew they’d want me in, the one where my back would be to the wall.
“So,” Dei said after sitting down across the table from me. “What brings you out to the desert, Mr. Bosch?”
I made the shrug again. I was getting good practice at it.
“I was just on my way to Vegas and pulled off to look for a place to take care of some business.”
“What kind of business?”
I smiled.
“I had to take a leak, Agent Dei.”
Now she smiled.
“Oh, and then you just happened to stumble onto our little outpost here.”
“Something like that.”
“Something like that.”
“It is hard to miss. How many bodies you got out there?”
“What makes you ask that? Who said anything about bodies?”
I smiled and shook my head. She was going to play it hard all the way.
“Do you mind if we take a look inside your car, Mr. Bosch?” she asked.
“I think you probably already have.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“I was a cop in L.A. I worked with the FBI before.”
“And so you know it all.”
“Put it this way, I know what a body dig smells like and I know you’ve looked in my car. You just want to get my permission now to cover your ass. I’m not giving it to you. Stay out of my car.”
I looked at Zigo and then over at Walling. It was then that I placed her and a whole profusion of questions came up out of the depths.
“I remember you now,” I said. “It’s Rachel, right?”
“Excuse me?” Walling asked.
“We actually met once. A long time ago in L.A. In Hollywood Division. You were out from Quantico. You were chasing the Poet and you thought one of the guys on the table was the next target. All the time you were right there with the Poet.”
“You worked homicides?”
“That’s right.”
“How is Ed Thomas?”
“Like me, he retired. But Ed went and opened a bookstore down in Orange. Sells mystery novels, if you can believe it.”
“I can.”
“You’re the one who shot Backus, right? In the house on the hill.”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes went from mine to Agent Dei’s. There was something I didn’t get. Walling was playing the lesser role here, but she obviously should have had seniority on Dei and her partner, Zigo. Then I put it together. She had probably been knocked down a notch or two in the scandal that came in the aftermath of the Poet investigation.
That leap led to another. I took a shot in the dark.
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “Even before Amsterdam.”
Walling’s eyes flared for a split second and I knew I had hit something solid.
“How do you know about Amsterdam?” Dei asked quickly.
I looked back over at her. I pulled out the shrug again and gave it to her.
“I just know, I guess. Is that what this is about? Is that the Poet’s work out there? He’s back, isn’t he?”
Dei looked at Zigo and signaled him to the door. He got up and left the RV. Dei then leaned forward so that I would not misunderstand the severity of the situation and her words.
“We want to know what you are doing here, Mr. Bosch. And you are not going anywhere until we get what we want.”
I mirrored her posture by leaning forward. Our faces were two feet apart.
“Your guy at the checkpoint took my license. I’m sure you took a look at it and know what I do. I’m working a case. And it’s confidential.”
Zigo came back in. He was short and squat, must’ve just made it in over bureau regs. His hair was cut short like a military man’s. He carried Terry McCaleb’s file on the missing men in his hand. I knew inside it were the photos I had printed from Terry’s computer. Zigo put the file down in front of Dei and she opened it. The photo of the old boat was on top. She lifted it and slid it across to me.
“Where did you get this?”
“That’s confidential.”
“Who are you working for?”
“That’s confidential.”
She flipped through the photos and came to the surreptitious shot Terry had taken of Shandy. She held it up to me.
“Who is this?”
“I don’t know for sure but I’m thinking it’s the long lost Robert Backus.”
“What?” Walling exclaimed.
She reached over and grabbed the photo out of Dei’s hands. I watched her eyes flick back and forth as she studied it.
“Jesus Christ!” she whispered.
She got up and walked with the photo over to the kitchen counter. She put it down and studied it some more.
“Rachel?” Dei asked. “Don’t say anything else.”
Dei turned back to the file. She spread the other photos of Shandy out on the table. She then looked back up at me. There was fire in her eyes now.
“Where did you take these photos?”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did? And don’t say it’s confidential again, Bosch, or you are going to find yourself in a deep dark hole until it becomes
un
-confidential. This is your last chance.”
I had been in one of the FBI’s deep dark holes before. I knew if I had to I could take her best shot. But the truth was I wanted to help. I knew I should help. I had to balance that desire with what would be the best move for Graciela McCaleb. I had a client and I had to protect her.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I want to help. And I want you to help me. Let me make a phone call and see if I can’t get released from confidentiality. How does that sound?”
“You need a phone?”
“I have one. I just don’t know if it works out here.”
“It will. We put up a repeater.”
“That’s nice. You guys think of everything.”
“Make your call.”
“I need to do it in private.”
“Then we’ll leave you here. Five minutes, Mr. Bosch.”
I was back to Mr. Bosch with her. That was an improvement.
“Actually, I would rather you wait here while I took a walk out in the desert. More private that way.”
“Suit yourself. Just do it.”
I left Rachel standing at the counter staring at the photo and Dei at the table looking at the file. I was escorted out of the RV and out to the open desert near the makeshift helicopter landing pad. Zigo stopped and let me walk on out by myself. He lit a smoke and kept his eyes on me. I pulled out my phone and checked the screen showing my last ten calls. I chose Buddy Lockridge’s number and called it. I knew I had a good shot at reaching him because his phone was a cell.
“Yeah?”
It didn’t sound like him.
“Buddy?”
“Yeah, who is this?”
“It’s Bosch, where are you?”
“I’m in bed, man. You always call me in bed.”
I looked at my watch. It was past noon.
“Well, get up. I’m putting you to work.”
His voice immediately took on an alertness.
“I’m up. What do you want me to do?”
I tried to quickly put together a plan. On the one hand I was annoyed with myself for not bringing McCaleb’s computer with me, but on the other hand I knew that if I had brought it, then it would be in the bureau’s hands now and not much use to me.
“I need you to get to
The Following Sea
as fast as you can. In fact, take a helicopter and I’ll pay you back. Just get over there and get on the boat.”
“Not a problem. Then what?”
“Go on Terry’s computer and into the photos. Print out the front and side shots of Shandy. Can you do that?”
“Yeah, but I thought you already printed —”
“I know, Buddy, I need you to do it again. Print those out, then go up into the file boxes on top. I forget which box but one of them has a file on a guy named Robert Backus. It’s a —”
“The Poet—yeah, I know which one.”
Of course you do, I almost said.
“Okay, good. Take the file and the photos and bring them to Las Vegas.”
“Vegas? I thought you were in San Francisco.”
For a moment that confused me but then I remembered how I had lied to him to throw him off my track.
“Changed my mind. Bring it all to Las Vegas, check into a hotel and wait for my call. Make sure your phone is charged. But don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
“How come I can’t call you when I get in?”
“Because in another twenty minutes I may not have this phone. Get moving now, Buddy.”
“You’re going to pay for all of this, right?”
“I’ll pay. I’ll also pay you for your time. You’re on the clock, Buddy, so get moving.”
“All right, I’m on it. You know, there’s a ferry in twenty minutes. I could take that and save you a bunch of money, you know.”
“Take a chopper. You’ll beat the ferry by an hour. I need that hour.”
“Okay, man, I’m gone.”
“And Buddy? Don’t tell anybody where you’re going and what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
He hung up and I checked Zigo before disconnecting. The agent had on dark glasses now but it appeared he was watching me. I faked like I had lost the signal and yelled
hello
a few times into the phone. I then closed it and reopened it and called Graciela’s number. My luck was holding. She was home and answered.
“Graciela, it’s Harry. Some things are happening and I need your permission to talk with the FBI about Terry’s death and my investigation.”
“The FBI? Harry, I told you I couldn’t go to them first. Not until I —”
“I didn’t go to them. They came to me. I’m out in the middle of the desert, Graciela. Things I found in Terry’s office led me out here and the FBI was already here. I think it is safe to talk. I think the person they are looking for here is the one who hurt Terry. I don’t think this is going to come back on you now. I think I should talk to them, tell them what I’ve got. It might help catch this guy.”
“Who is it?”
“Robert Backus. Do you know the name? Did Terry mention it?”
There was silence while she thought about it.
“I don’t think so. Who is it?”
“A guy he used to work with.”
“An agent?”
“Yes. He was the one they called the Poet. Did you ever hear Terry talk about the Poet?”
“Yes, a long time ago. I mean, three or four years. I remember he was upset because I think he was supposed to be dead but it looked like he wasn’t. Something like that.”
It must have been around the time that Backus had supposedly resurfaced in Amsterdam. Terry had probably just gotten the internal files on the investigation.
“Nothing since then?”
“No, I can’t remember anything.”
“Okay, Graciela. So what do you think? I cannot talk to them unless you allow it. I think it is okay.”
“Then go ahead if you think it will help.”
“It means they’ll be coming out there soon. FBI agents. They’ll probably take
The Following Sea
back to the mainland to go over it.”
“What for?”
“Evidence. This guy was on the boat. First as a charter and then he came back and snuck on. That was when he changed the meds.”
“Oh.”
“And they’ll also come to the house. They’ll want to talk to you. Just be honest, Graciela. Tell them everything. Don’t hold anything back and it will be all right.”
“Are you sure, Harry?”
“Yes, I’m sure. So you’re all right with this?”
“I’m all right.”
We said good-bye and disconnected. As I was walking back toward Zigo I opened my phone again and called my home number. I then disconnected and repeated the process nine more times, wiping out any record on my phone of the calls to Buddy Lockridge and Graciela McCaleb. If things went wrong in the RV and Dei wanted to know who I called, it wouldn’t be easy for her. She’d get nothing off my phone. She’d have to go to the phone company with a warrant.
As I approached, Zigo saw what I was doing. He smiled and shook his head.
“You know, Bosch, if we wanted your phone numbers, we would’ve picked them out of the air.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right, if we wanted to.”
“Wow, you guys are really rather special, aren’t you?”
Zigo looked at me over his sunglasses.
“Don’t be an asshole, Bosch. It gets tiring after a while.”
“You should know.”
19
Z
IGO ESCORTED ME BACK IN without another word. Agent Dei was waiting at the table. Rachel Walling still stood by the counter. I calmly sat down and looked at Dei.
“How’d it go?” she asked in a pleasant tone.
“It went fine. My client says I can talk to you. But it’s not going to be a one-way street. We trade. I answer your questions, you answer mine.”
She shook her head.
“Uh-uh, that’s not how it works. This is an FBI investigation. We don’t trade information with amateurs.”
“You’re saying I’m an amateur? I bring you a photo of the long-lost Robert Backus and I’m the amateur?”
I saw movement and looked over to Rachel. She had brought her hand up to her face to hide a smile. When she saw me looking at her she turned toward the counter and acted like she was studying the photo of Backus again.
“We don’t even know if that
is
Backus,” Dei said. “You’ve got a guy with a beard, a hat and dark glasses. It could be anybody.”
“And it could be the guy that is supposedly dead but somehow managed to kill five men in Amsterdam a few years ago and now, what, six men here. Or is it more than the six listed in that newspaper story?”
Dei gave me a tight, unpleasant smile.
“Look, you may be impressing yourself with all of this, but we’re still not impressed. It still comes down to one thing: you want to get out of here, then start talking to us. Now you have your client’s permission. I suggest you start by telling us who this client is.”
I leaned back. She was a fortress I didn’t think I could break through. But if nothing else, I had gotten that smile from Rachel Walling. That told me I might have a shot at climbing over the FBI barricade with her later.
“My client is Graciela McCaleb. Terry McCaleb’s wife. Widow, I mean.”
Dei blinked, then quickly recovered from the surprise. Or possibly it wasn’t surprise. Possibly it was a confirmation of some sort.
“And why did she hire you?”
“Because somebody switched out her husband’s medicine and killed him.”
That brought a momentary silence. Rachel slowly stepped away from the counter and came back to her chair. With few questions or any direction from Dei I told them the story of how I had come to be called by Graciela, the details of her husband’s tainted medications, and my investigation up until the point I reached the desert. I began to believe I was not surprising them with anything. Rather, it seemed more like I was confirming something or at least telling a story they already knew parts of. When I was finished Dei hit me with a few clarifying questions related to my movements. Zigo and Walling asked nothing.
“So,” Dei said after the story was finished. “That’s an interesting story. A lot of information. Why don’t you put it into context for us now. What does it all mean to you?”
“You’re asking me that? I thought that’s what Quantico does, puts it all into the blender and pours out a case profile and all of the answers.”
“Don’t worry, we will. But I’d like your view of it.”
“Well,” I said, but then didn’t continue. I was trying to put it all together and into my own blender, adding Robert Backus in as the newest ingredient.
“Well, what?”
“Sorry, I was just trying to put it together.”
“Just tell us what you are thinking.”
“Did anybody here know Terry McCaleb?”
“We all did. What does that have to do with —”
“I mean really know him.”
“I did once,” Rachel said. “We worked cases. But I hadn’t been in touch. I didn’t even know he was dead until today.”
“Well, you should know, and will know once you go over there and check his house and his boat and everything else, that he was still working cases. He couldn’t let it go. He worked some of his own old unsolveds and he worked new cases. He read the papers and watched TV. He made calls to cops on cases that interested him and offered to help out.”
“And this got him killed?” Dei asked.
I nodded.
“Eventually. I think so. In January the
L.A. Times
ran that story in the file you have there. Terry read it and got interested. He called over to Vegas Metro to offer his services. They shined him on, not interested. But they weren’t above dropping his name in the local paper when it ran a follow-up story on the missing men.”
“When was that?”
“Beginning of February. I’m sure you can check. Anyway, that story, his name in that story, drew the Poet to him.”
“Look, we’re not confirming anything about the Poet. Do you understand that?”
“Sure, whatever you want. You can take this whole thing as a hypothetical if you want.”
“Go on with it.”
“Somebody was abducting those men—and we now know burying them in the desert. Like all good serial killers he kept his eye on the media, to see if anybody was putting two and two together and getting close. He sees the follow-up story and he sees McCaleb’s name. It’s an old colleague. My guess is he knew McCaleb back in the day. At Quantico, before Terry came out to set up the Behavioral Sciences outpost in L.A. Before he went down with the bad heart.”
“Actually, Terry was the first agent Backus mentored in the unit,” Walling said.
Dei looked at her like she had betrayed some trust. Walling ignored her and I liked that about her.
“There you go,” I said. “They had that connection. Backus sees the name in the paper and one of two things happened. He took it as a challenge or he knew McCaleb was relentless and was going to keep coming, despite the apparent lack of interest in him from Metro.”
“So he went after McCaleb,” Dei said.
“Right.”
“And he had to eliminate him in a way that would not raise questions,” Rachel added.
“Right.”
I looked at Zigo. It was time for him to chime in but he said nothing.
“So he went over there and checked him out,” I continued. “He had the beard, the hat, the glasses, probably a little plastic surgery to go with it. He hired Terry to take him fishing.”
“And Terry didn’t know it was him,” Rachel said.
“Terry got suspicious of something but I’m not sure of what. Those photos were part of a series. Terry knew something was up with the guy and took extra photos. But I think that if he knew then that the guy was Backus he would’ve done something about it. He didn’t, and that makes me think he wasn’t sure what he had or who the guy was.”
I looked at Rachel.
“You looked at the photo. Can you tell, is it him? I mean, in a hypothetical sort of way.”
“I can’t say, hypothetically or not. I can’t see his eyes or enough of his face. If it’s him he was cut. His nose is different. So are his cheeks.”
“Easily changeable,” I said. “Come to L.A. sometime. I’ll take you to a guy I know in Hollywood who does work for the escort trade. He’s got some before and after photos that will make you praise the wonders of medical science.”
“I’m sure,” Dei said, even though I was talking to Rachel. “Then what? When’s he switch McCaleb’s meds?”
I wanted to consult my chronology but my notebook was in my coat pocket. They hadn’t searched me yet, so I wanted to keep the notebook out of it, maybe get out of there with it.
“Um, about two weeks after the charter Terry’s boat was broken into. Whoever it was took a GPS device but I think that was just as a cover in case Terry realized somebody had—what is it?”
I had watched their reactions. The GPS meant something.
“What kind of GPS was it?” Rachel asked.
“Rachel,” Dei cut in quickly. “You’re an observer, remember?”
“A Gulliver,” I said. “I don’t remember the exact model. The sheriff’s report is on the boat. It actually wasn’t Terry’s. It was his partner’s.”
“Do you know the partner’s name?” Dei asked.
“Yeah, Buddy Lockridge. Don’t you remember him from the movie?”
“I didn’t see it. Do you know anything more about the history of this GPS device?”
“Buddy told me he won it in a poker game. It had a lot of good fishing spots marked on it. He was pissed off when it got stolen, thought it was another fishing guide who took it.”
I could tell by their reactions that I was hitting every pitch. The GPS was important. It had not been taken simply as a cover. I was wrong about that. It took me a minute but then I put it together.
“I get it,” I said. “That’s how you found this place, isn’t it? Backus sent you people the GPS with this place marked. He led you here like he did with Terry.”
“This is not about us,” Dei said. “It’s about you.”
But I glanced at Rachel and saw the confirmation in her eyes. I took the next jump and figured it had been sent to her. That was why she was here as an observer. Backus called her out, just as he had called out Terry.
“You said Terry was the first agent Backus mentored in the unit. Who was the second?”
“Let’s move on,” Dei said.
Rachel didn’t answer but she gave me that slight smile that looked so sad with those dead eyes. She was telling me I had it right. She came after Terry McCaleb in the mentoring program.
“I hope you are taking appropriate precautions,” I said quietly.
Dei opened the file on the table.
“That’s actually no business of yours,” she said. “Now, there are some things in your notes here I want to ask you about. First of all, who is William Bing?”
I looked at Dei. She thought that it was my file and my notes.
“I don’t know. Just a name I came across.”
“Where?”
“I think Terry had written it down. I haven’t figured out who it is yet.”
“And this reference to the triangle theory, what does it mean?”
“What does it mean to you?”
“Mr. Bosch, don’t annoy me. Don’t play cute.”
“Cherie?” Rachel asked.
“What?”
“I think those are probably Terry’s notes.”
Dei looked down at the file and realized Rachel was right. I looked at Rachel like I was hurt that she had ratted me out. Dei closed the file abruptly.
“Right. Of course.”
She looked up at me.
“You know what that means?”
“No, but I think you’ll tell me.”
“It means we’ll take it from here. You can head on back to L.A. now.”
“I’m not going to L.A. I’m going to Las Vegas. I have a place there.”
“You can go wherever you want but stay away from this investigation. We are officially taking it over.”
“You know I don’t work for any police department, Agent Dei. You can’t take anything over from me unless I want you to. I’m a private operator.”
She nodded like she was understanding of my situation.
“That’s fine, Mr. Bosch, we’ll be speaking to your employer later today and you’ll be unemployed before sunset.”
“I’m just trying to make a living.”
“I’m just trying to catch a killer. So understand me, your services are no longer required. Stay away from it. You’re out. You’re finished. Can I be any clearer?”
“Think maybe you could put it in writing, too?”
“You know what, I think you should get out of here and go home while you still can. Tom, would you get Mr. Bosch his license and keys and escort him to his car?”
“Gladly,” Zigo said, his first word uttered in the motor home.
I reached for the file but she snatched it away from my grasp.
“And we’ll be keeping this.”
“Sure. Happy hunting, Agent Dei.”
“Thank you.”
I followed Zigo toward the door. I glanced back and nodded to Rachel and she did the same to me. I think I saw a trace of light enter her eyes.