City of Bones (41 page)

Bosch closed the phone and pushed the pedal down even harder. Soon he crossed the northern perimeter of the city and was in the San Fernando Valley. Saturday traffic was light. He switched freeways twice and was cruising through the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood a half hour after hanging up with Edgar. As he exited onto Highland he could see the Hotel Usher rising a few blocks to the south. Its windows were uniformly dark, the curtains stripped out in preparation for the work ahead.

Bosch had no rover with him and had forgotten to ask Edgar where the command post for the search would be located. He didn’t want to simply drive up to the hotel in his slickback and risk exposing the operation. He took out his phone and called the watch office. Mankiewicz answered.

“Mank, you ever take a day off?”

“Not in January. My kids celebrate Christmas and Chanukah. I need the OT. What’s up?”

“Can you get me the CP location on the thing at the Usher?”

“Yeah, it’s the parking lot at Hollywood Presbyterian.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Two minutes later Bosch pulled into the church parking lot. There were five squad cars parked there along with a slickback and a narc car. The cars were parked up close to the church so that they were shielded from view of the windows of the Usher, which rose into the sky on the other side of the church.

Two officers sat in one of the patrol cars. Bosch parked and walked over to the driver side window. The car was running. Bosch knew it was the pickup car. When the others grabbed Stokes in the Usher, a radio call would go out for the pickup. They would drive over and pick up the prisoner.

“Where are they?”

“Twelfth floor,” said the driver. “Nothing yet.”

“Let me borrow your rover.”

The cop handed his radio out the window to Bosch. Bosch called Edgar on channel two.

“Harry, you here?”

“Yeah, I’m coming up.”

“We’re almost done.”

“I’m still coming up.”

He gave the radio back to the driver and started walking out of the parking lot. When he got to the construction fence that surrounded the Usher property he went to the north end, where he knew he would find the seam in the fence the squatters used to get in. It was partially hidden behind a construction sign announcing the arrival soon of historic luxury apartments. He pulled back the loose fence and ducked through.

There were two main staircases at either end of the building. Bosch assumed there would be a team of uniform officers posted at the bottom of each in case Stokes somehow slipped through the search and tried to escape. Bosch took out his badge and held it up and out as he opened the exterior stairwell door on the east side of the building.

As he stepped into the stairwell he was met by two officers who held their weapons out and at their sides. Bosch nodded and the cops nodded back. Bosch started up the stairs.

He tried to pace himself. Each floor had two runners of stairs and a landing for the turn. He had twenty-four to climb. The smell from the overflowing toilets was stifling and all he could think about was what Edgar had told him about all odors being particulate. Sometimes knowledge was an awful thing.

The hallway doors had been removed and with them the floor markings. Though someone had taken it upon himself to paint numbers on the walls of the lower landings, as Bosch got higher the markings disappeared and he lost count and became unsure what floor he was on.

At either the ninth or tenth floor he took a breather. He sat down on a reasonably clean step and waited for his breathing to become more regular. The air was cleaner this high up. Fewer squatters used the upper floors of the building because of the climb.

Bosch listened but he heard no human sounds. He knew the search teams had to be on the top floor by now. He was wondering if the tip on Stokes had been wrong, or if the suspect had slipped out.

Finally, he stood and started up again. A minute later he realized he had counted wrong—but in his favor. He stepped up onto the last landing and the open door of the penthouse—the thirteenth floor.

He blew out his breath and almost smiled at the prospect of not having to climb another set of stairs when he heard shouts coming from the hallway.

“There! Right there!”

“Stokes, no! Police! Free—”

Two quick and brutally loud gunshots sounded and echoed down the hall, obliterating the voices. Bosch drew his gun and quickly moved to the doorway. As he began to peek around the jamb he heard two more shots and pulled back.

The echo prevented him from identifying the origin of the shots. He leaned around the jamb again and looked into the hallway. It was dark with light slashing through it from the doorways of the rooms on the west side. He saw Edgar standing in a combat crouch behind two uniformed officers. Their backs were to Bosch and their weapons were pointed at one of the open doorways. They were fifty feet down the hall from Bosch.

“Clear!” a voice yelled. “We’re clear in here!”

The men in the hall raised their weapons up in unison and moved toward the open doorway.

“LAPD in the back!” Bosch yelled and then stepped into the hallway.

Edgar glanced back at him as he followed the two uniforms into the room.

Bosch walked quickly down the hallway and was about to enter the room when he had to step back to let a uniform officer out. He was talking on his rover.

“Central, we need paramedics to forty-one Highland, thirteenth floor. Suspect down, gunshot wounds.”

As Bosch entered the room he looked back. The cop on the rover was Edgewood. Their eyes locked for just a moment and then Edgewood disappeared into the shadows of the hallway. Bosch turned back to view the room.

Stokes was sitting in a closet that had no door. He was leaning back against the rear wall. His hands were in his lap, one holding a small gun, a .25 caliber pocket rocket. He wore black jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt that was covered with his own blood. He had entry wounds on his chest and right below his left eye. His eyes were open but he was clearly dead.

Edgar was squatted in front of the body. He didn’t touch it. There was no use trying for a pulse and everybody knew it. The smell of burnt cordite invaded Bosch’s nose and it was a welcome relief from the smell outside the room.

Bosch turned around to take in the whole room. There were too many people in the small space. There were three uniforms, Edgar, and a plainclothes Bosch assumed was a narc. Two of the uniforms were huddled together at the far wall, studying two bullet holes in the plaster. One raised a finger and was about to probe one of the holes.

“Don’t touch that,” Bosch barked. “Don’t touch anything. I want everybody to back out of here and wait for OIS. Who fired a weapon?”

“Edge did it,” said the narc. “The guy was waitin’ for us in the closet and we—”

“Excuse me, what’s your name?”

“Phillips.”

“Okay, Phillips, I don’t want to hear your story. Save it for OIS. Go get Edgewood and go back downstairs and wait. When the paramedics get here tell them never mind. Save them a trip up the steps.”

The cops reluctantly shuffled out of the room, leaving only Bosch and Edgar. Edgar got up and walked over to the window. Bosch went to the corner farthest from the closet and looked back at the body. He then approached the body and squatted down in the same spot where Edgar had been.

He studied the gun in Stokes’s hand. He assumed that when it was removed from the hand OIS investigators would find the serial number had been burned away by acid.

He thought about the shots he had heard while on the stairway landing. Two and two. It was hard to judge them by memory, especially considering his position at the time. But he thought the first two rounds had been louder and heavier than the second two. If that was so it would mean Stokes had fired his little popper after Edgewood had fired his service weapon. It would mean Stokes had gotten off two shots after he had been hit in the face and chest—wounds that appeared instantly fatal to Bosch.

“What do you think?”

Edgar had come up behind him.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Bosch said. “He’s dead. It’s an OIS case now.”

“What it is is a closed case, partner. I guess we didn’t have to worry about whether the DA would file the case after all.”

Bosch nodded. He knew there would be wrap-up investigation and paperwork, but the case was finished. It would ultimately be classified as “closed by other means,” meaning no trial and no conviction but carried in the solved column just the same.

“Guess not,” he said.

Edgar swatted him on the shoulder.

“Our last case together, Harry. We go out on top.”

“Yeah. Tell me something, did you mention the DA and about it being a juvy case during the briefing in the roll-call room this morning?”

After a long moment Edgar said, “Yeah, I might’ve mentioned something about it.”

“Did you tell them we were spinning our wheels, the way you said it to me? That the DA probably wouldn’t even file a case on Stokes?”

“Yeah, I might’ve said it like that. Why?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He stood up and walked over to the room’s window. He could see the Capitol Records building and farther past it the Hollywood sign up on the crest of the hill. Painted on the side of a building a few blocks away was an anti-smoking sign showing a cowboy with a drooping cigarette in his mouth accompanied by a warning about cigarettes causing impotence.

He turned back to Edgar.

“You going to hold the scene until OIS gets here?”

“Yeah, sure. They’re going to be pissed off about having to hump the thirteen floors.”

Bosch headed toward the door.

“Where are you going, Harry?”

Bosch walked out of the room without answering. He used the stairwell at the farthest end of the hallway so that he wouldn’t catch up to the others as he was going down.

53

T
HE living members of what had once been a family stood as points of a hard-edged triangle with the grave in the middle. They stood on a sloping hillside in Forest Lawn, Samuel Delacroix on one side of the coffin while his ex-wife stood across from him. Sheila Delacroix’s spot was at the end of the coffin opposite the preacher. The mother and daughter had black umbrellas open against the light drizzle that had been falling since dawn. The father had none. He stood there getting wet, and neither woman made a move to share her protection with him.

The sound of the rain and the freeway hissing nearby drowned out most of what the rented preacher had to say before it got to Bosch. He had no umbrella either and watched from a distance and the protection of an oak tree. He thought that it was somehow appropriate that the boy should be formally buried on a hill and in the rain.

He had called the medical examiner’s office to find out which funeral home was handling the service and it had led him to Forest Lawn. He had also learned that it had been the boy’s mother who had claimed the remains and planned the service. Bosch came to the funeral for the boy, and because he wanted to see the mother again.

Arthur Delacroix’s coffin looked like it had been made for an adult. It was polished gray with brushed chrome handles. As coffins went it was beautiful, like a newly waxed car. The rain beaded on its surface and then slid down into the hole beneath. But it was still too big for those bones and somehow that bothered Bosch. It was like seeing a child in ill-fitting clothes, obvious hand-me-downs. It always seemed to say something about the child. That they were wanting. That they were second.

When the rain started coming down harder the preacher raised an umbrella from his side and held his prayer book with one hand. A few of his lines managed to drift over to Bosch intact. He was talking about the greater kingdom that had welcomed Arthur. It made Bosch think of Golliher and his unfaltering faith in that kingdom despite the atrocities he studied and documented every day. For Bosch, though, the jury was still out on all of that. He was still a dweller in the lesser kingdom.

Bosch noticed that none of the three family members looked at one another. After the coffin was lowered and the preacher made the final sign of the cross, Sheila turned and started walking down the slope to the parking road. She had never once acknowledged her parents.

Samuel immediately followed and when Sheila looked back and saw him coming after her she picked up speed. Finally, she just dropped the umbrella and started running. She made it to her car and drove away before her father could catch up.

Samuel watched his daughter’s car cutting through the vast cemetery until it disappeared through the gate. He then went back and picked up the discarded umbrella. He took it to his own car and left as well.

Bosch looked back at the burial site. The preacher was gone. Bosch looked about and saw the top of a black umbrella disappearing over the crest of the hill. Bosch didn’t know where the man was going, unless he had another funeral to officiate on the other side of the hill.

That left Christine Waters at the grave. Bosch watched her say a silent prayer and then walk toward the two remaining cars on the road below. He chose an angle of intersection and headed that way. As he got close she calmly looked at him.

“Detective Bosch, I am surprised to see you here.”

“Why is that?”

“Aren’t detectives supposed to be aloof, not get emotionally involved? Showing up at a funeral shows emotional attachment, don’t you think? Especially rainy-day funerals.”

He fell into stride next to her and she gave him half of the umbrella’s protection.

“Why did you claim the remains?” he asked. “Why did you do this?”

He gestured back toward the grave on the hill.

“Because I didn’t think anybody else would.”

They got to the road. Bosch’s car was parked in front of hers.

“Good-bye, Detective,” she said as she broke from him, walked between the cars and went to the driver’s door of hers.

“I have something for you.”

She opened the car door and looked back at him.

“What?”

He opened his door and popped the trunk. He walked back between the cars. She closed her umbrella and threw it into her car and then came over.