Angels Flight (30 page)

“Did they have a name?”

“They didn’t say a name but they knew it. They said it was one of the Black Warrior cops. The lead detective, in fact.”

Bosch was dumbfounded. The lead detective was Frankie Sheehan.

“That’s impos — can I use your phone?”

“Help yourself. By the way, do you know you have glass in your hair?”

Bosch brushed his hand through his hair while he stepped to the desk and picked up the phone. While he punched in the number of Irving’s conference room Pelfry watched. The phone was answered immediately.

“Let me talk to Lindell.”

“This is Lindell.”

“It’s Bosch. What’s this on Channel Four about a suspect?”

“I know. I’m checking into it. Somebody leaked. All I can say is that I updated Irving and the next thing I know it’s on TV. I think he’s your leak, not Chas — ”

“I don’t care about that. What are you saying, it’s Sheehan? That’s im — ”

“I’m not saying that. That’s the leak talking and I think the leak is the goddamned deputy chief.”

“Have you brought Sheehan in?”

“Yeah, we got him in here and we’re talking to him. Strictly voluntary at this point. He thinks he can talk his way out of the box. We got all day and then some. We’ll see if he can.”

“Why Sheehan? Why’d you bring him in?”

“I thought you knew. He was on top of Chastain’s list this morning. Elias sued him once before. Five years ago. He shot some asshole while trying to make an arrest on a murder. Put five holes in him. The widow sued and eventually won a hundred grand — even though to me it looked like a righteous shoot. In fact your buddy Chastain was the one who investigated the shoot and cleared him.”

“I remember the case. It was a righteous shoot. But that didn’t matter to the jury. It was just a little while after Rodney King.”

“Okay, well before it went to trial, Sheehan threatened Elias. During a depo, in front of the lawyers, the widow and, most important, the steno girl. She got it down word for word and it was in the depo which was in the file that Chastain and his people read yesterday. The threat was that Sheehan told Elias that someday when he least expected it, somebody was going to come up from behind and put him down like a dog. Words to that effect. Words that describe what happened on Angels Flight pretty good.”

“Come on, that was five years ago. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Bosch noticed that both Edgar and Pelfry were watching him intently.

“I know it, Bosch. But then you have this new lawsuit on the Black Warrior thing and who’s the lead? Detective Frank Sheehan. On top of that, he uses a nine-millimeter Smith and Wesson. And one other thing, we pulled his file. He’s qualified eleven straight years at the range as an expert marksman. And you know the kind of shooting it took on Angels Flight. You take it all into consideration and it put him at the top of the list of people to talk to. So we’re talking to him.”

“The marksman thing is bullshit. They give those pins out like candy at the range. I bet seven or eight out of every ten cops have that ribbon. And eight out of ten cops carry Smith nines. Meantime, Irving — or whoever the leak is — is throwing him to the wolves. Sacrificing him to the media so maybe he can stop the city from burning.”

“He’s only a sacrifice if he didn’t do it.”

There was a cynical casualness in Lindell’s voice that Bosch didn’t like.

“You better take it slow,” Bosch said. “Because I guarantee you Frankie wasn’t the shooter.”

“Frankie? You guys friends, are you?”

“We were partners. A long time back.”

“Well, it’s funny. He doesn’t seem so fond of you now. My guys tell me that the first thing he said when they knocked on his door was ‘Fuck Harry Bosch.’ He thinks you ratted him out, man. He doesn’t know that we have the threat in the deposition. Or he doesn’t remember it.”

Bosch put the phone down on its hook. He was in a daze. Frankie Sheehan believed that Bosch had turned their conversation of the night before against him. He believed Harry had turned him in to the bureau. It made Bosch feel worse than the knowledge that his old partner and friend now sat in an interview room fighting for his life.

“Sounds like you don’t agree much with Channel Four,” Pelfry said.

“No, I don’t.”

“You know something, I’ma take a wild ass guess here, but I think that glass in your hair means you’re the two guys they were talkin’ about on TV getting potshotted over on Western.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Edgar asked.

“Well, that’s a few blocks from where that Stacey Kincaid girl ended up.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, if that’s where you were comin’ from, then I wonder if you met my two buddies, Rufus and Andy.”

“Yeah, we met ’em and we know all about the body being dumped three days late.”

“You’re following my footsteps then.”

“Some of them. We visited Mistress Regina last night, too.”

Bosch was finally out of his daze but hung back and watched Edgar making progress with Pelfry.

“Then this isn’t all bullshit what you said about who you think hit Eli?”

“We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Then what else you want to know? Eli kept his cards close most of the time. Very close to the vest. I never knew for sure which corner of the puzzle I was working, if you know what I mean.”

“Tell us about the license plates,” Bosch said, ending his silence. “We know you guys pulled seventy-five days’ worth of receipts from Hollywood Wax. How come?”

Pelfry looked at them a long moment as if deciding something.

“Come on back,” he finally said.

He led them to the rear office.

“I didn’t want you guys back here,” he said. “But now . . .”

He raised his hands to indicate the boxes covering every horizontal surface in the office. They were short boxes that normally held four six-packs of soda. Stacked in them were bundled receipts with cardboard markers with dates written on them.

“Those are the receipts from Hollywood Wax?” Bosch asked.

“That’s right. Eli was going to bring ’em all into court as an exhibit. I was holding ’em here till he needed ’em.”

“What exactly was he going to show with them?”

“I thought you boys knew.”

“We’re a little behind you, Mr. Pelfry.”

“Jenkins. Or Jenks. Most people call me Jenks. I don’t know exactly what alla these receipts meant — remember what I said about Eli not showin’ me all the cards in his deck — but I got an idea. See, when he su’peenied these, he gave me a list of license plate numbers on a piece a paper. He said I was to look through alla these and see if any of those numbers on the list turned up on the receipts.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah, took me the better part of a week.”

“Any matches?”

“One match.”

He went over to one of the boxes and stuck his finger into the stack where there was a cardboard marker with the date 6/12 noted on it.

“This one.”

Pelfry pulled out a receipt and took it over to Bosch. Edgar came over and looked as well. The receipt was for a daily special. It identified the car to be washed as a white Volvo wagon. It listed the license plate number and the price of the special — $14.95 plus tax.

“This plate number was on the list Elias gave you,” Bosch said.

“That’s right.”

“It was the only match you found.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You know whose car this plate is from?”

“Not exactly. Eli didn’t tell me to run it. But I got a guess who it belongs to.”

“The Kincaids.”

“Now you’re with me.”

Bosch looked at Edgar. He could tell by his partner’s face he hadn’t made the leap.

“The fingerprints. To prove Harris was innocent beyond any kind of doubt, he had to explain his client’s fingerprints on the victim’s schoolbook. If there was no reason or possible legitimate explanation for Harris having been in the Kincaid house and touching the book, then there were two alternative reasons. One, the prints were planted by the cops. Two, Harris touched the book when it was somewhere else, outside of the girl’s bedroom.”

Edgar nodded as he understood.

“The Kincaids had their car washed at Hollywood Wax and Shine, where Harris worked. The receipt proves it.”

“Right. All Elias had to do was put the book in the car.”

Bosch turned to the boxes on Pelfry’s desk and ticked his finger on the cardboard marker.

“June twelve,” he said. “That’s right around the end of the school year. Kids clear out their lockers. They take all their books home. They’re not doing homework anymore so maybe the books lie around in the back of the Volvo.”

“The Volvo goes to the car wash,” Edgar said. “I’d bet the daily special includes a vacuum, maybe some Armorall on the inside.”

“The washer — the polish man — touches the book when he’s working inside the car,” Bosch added. “There are your prints.”

“The polish man was Harris,” Edgar said. He then looked at Pelfry and said, “The manager at the car wash said you came back to look at the time cards.”

Pelfry nodded.

“I did. I got a copy of a time card that proves Harris was working at the time that white Volvo came in and got the special. Eli asked me to go over to the car wash and try to finesse that without a su’peenie. I figure the time card was the linchpin and he didn’t want anybody to know about it.”

“Even the judge who signed the subpoenas on the case,” Bosch said. “He must not have trusted anybody.”

“Looks like with good reason,” Pelfry said.

While Edgar asked Pelfry to show him the time card, Bosch withdrew and tried to think about this latest information. He remembered what Sheehan had said the night before about the fingerprints being so good because the person who had left them had probably been sweating. He understood now that that was not because of nervousness over the crime being committed, but because he was working at the car wash, vacuuming a car when those prints were left on that book. Michael Harris. He was innocent. Truly innocent. Bosch had not been convinced until that moment. And it was astounding to him. He wasn’t a dreamer. He knew cops made mistakes and innocent people went to prison. But the mistake here was colossal. An innocent man tortured as cops tried to bully him into confessing to something he had clearly not done. Satisfied they had their man, the police had dropped their investigation and let the real killer slip away — until a civil rights lawyer’s investigation found him, a discovery that got the lawyer killed. The chain reaction went even further, pushing the city once more to the brink of self-destruction.

“So then, Mr. Pelfry,” Bosch said, “who killed Stacey Kincaid?”

“It’s Jenks. And I don’t know. I know it wasn’t Michael Harris — ain’t no doubt about that. But Eli didn’t tell me the other part — if he knew before they got him.”

“They?” Bosch asked.

“Whatever.”

“Tell us about Mistress Regina,” Edgar said.

“What’s to tell? Eli got a tip, he passed it to me. I checked the broad out and couldn’t see any connection. She’s just a freak — a dead end. If you guys were there, you know what I mean. I think Eli dropped it after I told him about her.”

Bosch thought a moment and shook his head.

“I don’t think so. There’s something there.”

“Well, if there is, he didn’t tell me about it.”

In the car Bosch called Rider to check in. She said she had completed a review of the files without anything that needed immediate follow-up catching her eye.

“We’re going to see the Kincaids,” Bosch said.

“How come so soon?”

“Turns out one of them was Harris’s alibi.”

“What?”

Bosch explained the license plate discovery Pelfry and Elias had made.

“One out of four,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“We now know what one out of four of the mystery notes means.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I was thinking about the first two. I think they’re connected and I’ve got an idea about ‘dot the i.’ I’m going to go online and check it out. You know what a hypertext link is?”

“I don’t speak that language, Kiz. I still type with two fingers.”

“I know. I’ll explain it when you get back here. Maybe I’ll know if I have something.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

He was about to hang up.

“Oh, Harry?”

“What?”

“You gotta call from Carla Entrenkin. She said she needed to talk to you. I was going to give her your pager but then I thought you might not want that. She might start paging you every time she gets a wild hair.”

“That’s fine. Did she leave a number?”

She gave it to him and they hung up.

“We’re going to the Kincaids’?” Edgar asked.

“Yeah, I just decided. Get on the radio and run the plate on that white Volvo. See what name’s on it. I’ve got to make a call.”

Bosch called the number Carla Entrenkin had left and she answered after two rings.

“It’s Bosch.”

“Detective . . .”

“You called?”

“Yes, uh, I just wanted to apologize about last night. I was upset at what I saw on the television and . . . and I think I spoke too soon. I’ve done some checking and I think I was wrong about what I said.”

“You were.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Okay, Inspector, I appreciate you calling. I better — ”

“How is the investigation going?”

“It’s going. Have you talked to Chief Irving?”

“Yes, I have. He told me that they are questioning Detective Sheehan.”

“Don’t hold your breath on that.”

“I’m not. What about what you are pursuing? I was told you are reinvestigating the original case. The murder of Stacey Kincaid.”

“Well, we can now prove Harris didn’t do it. You were right about that. Elias was going to go into court and clear him. He didn’t do it. We now just have to prove somebody else did. And my money is still on that somebody being the one who also did Elias. I have to go now, Inspector.”

“Will you call me if you make significant progress?”

Bosch thought about this for a few moments. Dealing with Carla Entrenkin somehow gave him the feel of consorting with the enemy.

“Yes,” he finally said. “I’ll call if there is significant progress.”