Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories (3 page)

Bosch studied the photos, many of which were professional headshots, and the lists of credits. He found nothing in common with Lizbeth Grayson other than that all the women had been young and hopeful. There was no shared acting school or common agent. No showcase play or work as an extra on the same movie. He didn’t see the connections and began to think that maybe Jerry Edgar was right. He was chasing something that wasn’t there.

He was on the second to the last file when Rider spoke up.

“Harry, are you finding anything?”

“No, not yet. And I’m running out of files.”

“What will you do?”

“I have to decide whether to drop it or continue on. If I continue I’ll have to work it on the side. In homicide they call it working a hobby case. You work it when you have the time. The next step is to conduct a field investigation—go out and talk to the people who knew these women, check their apartments, see if anybody has any of their belongings still. I can tell you right now my lieutenant isn’t going to let me go off and do that. I’ll have to work it like a hobby.”

“Who’s the lieutenant in Hollywood? Is that Pounds?”

“Yep. Pounds. He’s not much of an expansive thinker.”

Rider smiled and nodded.

“Look, I’m sorry I wasted your lunch break,” Bosch said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Besides, I’m not finished yet.”

She held up the five remaining files she needed to look through. He smiled and nodded. He liked her confidence. They dropped into silence and dove back into the files.

In ten minutes Bosch was finished with the files and had found nothing that would bump the case up higher than a hobby. He asked Rider if she wanted a cup of coffee but she said no. He got up to get a cup for himself. The cafeteria was thinning out and getting quiet after the lunch rush. When he got back to their table Rider was standing. Bosch thought she had finished and was about to go. But she was standing because she was excited.

“I think I found something,” she said.

Bosch put his coffee down on the table and looked at what she had. She was holding two headshot photographs. They were of two different women.

“This first one is from a case last year,” Rider said. “Her name was Nancy Crowe. Lived on Kester Avenue in Sherman Oaks. This other one is Marcie Conlon. Died five months ago. Also an overdose. Lived up in Whitley Heights.”

“Okay.”

Bosch looked at the headshots. The women had entirely different looks. Crowe had short dark hair and pale white skin. Conlon was blond and tan. Just by looking at the photos Bosch would have guessed that Crowe was a serious actress and Conlon was not. He knew that he was subscribing to a sweeping generalization so it was not something he would say out loud.

“Look,” Rider said.

She put the photos down on the table side by side.

“What’s the same?”

Bosch immediately saw what had been there all along and simply gone unnoticed in his survey of everything contained in the files. In the Crowe photo the subject was posed, looking around the corner of a brick wall. Bosch guessed that she was supposed to look mysterious, the photo showing depth of character and perhaps making up for her not being a knockout beauty. In the Conlon photo the woman was posed with her back leaning against a brick wall. Her pose was meant to be alluring, even sexually intriguing, and it counterposed the soft beauty of her features against the hard brick wall.

“The brick wall,” Bosch said.

Using her finger, Rider pointed out bricks in each photo that were the same. They were either chipped or scuffed in some way that made them unique. It was clear that both actresses had posed at the same brick wall.

“But now look,” she said.

She flipped the photos over, and below the listing of credits was the name of the photographer. The names were different but each name was followed by a matching location. Hollywood & Vine Studios.

“So you have different photographers using the same studio,” Bosch said.

He was thinking out loud, trying to take it to the next step.

“Did you look through the other files where there are headshots?” he asked.

“No, I just discovered this connection.”

“Good work.”

Bosch quickly went back to the stack of files and soon they were pulling the headshot photos out of files where they found them.

“Every actress in the city needs headshots,” Rider said as she worked. “It’s like death and taxes. You walk down Hollywood Boulevard and there are ads for photographers on every light pole.”

In five minutes they had six headshot photos of dead actresses with photo credits from six different photographers but all from Hollywood & Vine Studios. Lizbeth Grayson’s photo—the shot Bosch had borrowed from the acting coach—was one of the six.

Bosch spread the six shots out side by side and stared at them.

“Could this just be a coincidence?” Rider asked. “Maybe Hollywood and Vine Studios is a place all the photographers use.”

“Maybe,” Bosch said, continuing to stare at the photos.

“I guess we could check out wheth—”

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said excitedly.

He picked up one of the photos and looked at it closely. It was a shot of an actress named Marnie Fox. She had supposedly committed suicide by overdose six weeks earlier. He nodded and put it back down. He then went to the Grayson file.

“What?” Rider asked.

From the file he pulled one of the photos of Lizbeth Grayson in death and placed it down next to the shot of Marnie Fox. Now it was Bosch’s turn.

“What do you see that is the same?” he asked.

Rider moved in to look closely at the side-by-side photos. She got it quickly.

“The pendant. They are both wearing the same kind of pendant.”

“What if they are not duplicates?” Bosch asked. “What if they are wearing the
same
pendant? A diamond pendant the killer takes from one victim and then puts on his next victim. And from that victim he takes her pearl necklace and puts it—”

“On the next victim,” Rider finished.

Bosch started putting the files back into a stack he could carry.

“What’s next?” Rider asked. “Hollywood and Vine Studios?”

“You got that right.”

“I’m going with you.”

Bosch looked at her.

“You sure? Do you need to get an okay?”

“I’ll call it a long lunch.”

On the way Rider made a list of the photographers’ names and handed it to Bosch. When they got to Hollywood they parked in the lot by the Henry Fonda Theater and Bosch found a pay phone to call Jerry Edgar. He brought him up to date and his partner seemed miffed that he was working the case with an analyst, but Bosch reminded Edgar that he hadn’t been interested in Bosch’s hunch about Lizbeth Grayson. Properly cowed, Edgar said he would meet them at Hollywood & Vine Studios.

The photo studio was on the third floor of an old office building at the northeast corner of Hollywood and Vine. The building had been updated in recent years with each floor having been gutted and turned into lofts. This was attractive to the creative industry. Most of the listings on the building directory in the lobby were production companies, talent management offices and various other enterprises from the fringe of Hollywood. Bosch assumed that having an address that was as steeped in myth as Hollywood and Vine was a bonus to them all.

They waited ten minutes in the lobby for Edgar and then Bosch grew annoyed. Hollywood Division was less than five minutes away. He pushed the button and told Rider they weren’t waiting any longer. On the ride up they worked out how they would handle the visit to the photo studio. They stepped out of the elevator and approached a counter where there was a young man with his head down reading a script. He got to the bottom of the page before looking up at them.

Bosch badged him and asked his name. He said Louis Reineke and he spelled it for them. Bosch asked to see a photographer named Stephen Jepson and Reineke told him that Jepson wasn’t there. Bosch proceeded down the list of six photographers. None were there and none could be reached, according to Reineke. The counterman became increasingly nervous as Bosch asked about the photographers.

“So none of these photographers are here and you have no contact information for them either,” Bosch said.

“We rent space by the hour,” Reineke said. “The photographers come in, pay for an hour or whatever time they want and then they split. There is no need for numbers. Are you guys from Internal Affairs or something?”

Bosch was getting annoyed that the lead was hitting a dead end.

“We’re from homicide,” he said. “Where is the manager of the studio?”

“He’s not here. I’m the only one here.”

“All right, when was the last time any of these six men were here taking photographs?”

“I’ll have to check the books.”

He moved down the counter and opened a drawer. From it he took a large accounts book and opened it. The book appeared to list rentals of studio space by date, time and photographer. Reineke ran his finger backward over the columns and finally stopped.

“He was here last Friday,” he said. “Shot for an hour.”

“He? Which one?”

Reineke looked back down at the book.

“That would have been Stephen Jepson.”

There was something off about the conversation with Reineke. It was like they were missing each other.

“So how would that have worked?” Bosch asked. “He just came in and said he wanted some space to shoot?”

“Yeah, like that. Or he might’ve called first to make sure we weren’t booked up. Sometimes that happens.”

“Did he call?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Can we go back and look at the studio space?”

“Sure. We’re empty right now. I’ve got a three o’clock and then a four.”

They went around the counter and through a door into the loft space. There were three different photo setup areas with light stands and pull-down backgrounds. There were a few pieces of furniture to use as props. There were wires running across the ceiling and black curtains that would allow the different photo areas to be partitioned for privacy. Bosch saw the brick wall from the photos running the length of the space. He guessed that Stephen Jepson’s session on Friday had been with Lizbeth Grayson.

Bosch was staring at the wall when he remembered something that had been wrong about the conversation with Reineke. He turned and looked at the young script reader.

“Why did you ask if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke stuck out his lower lip and shook his head as he looked over at the doorway and then back to the counter.

“Did I? I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering.”

“Why would you wonder if we were with Internal Affairs?”

Reineke did not look at him. The classic act of a liar.

“I don’t know. I was just guessing.”

“No, Louis, you were just lying. Why did you ask about IAD?”

“Look, man, I just was goofing. I was trying to think of something to ask.”

“Call the manager, Louis. Tell him he better get here for the three o’clock because you are going to the station with us. We’ll sit you down in a room for a while and when you’re finished
goofing
and want to tell us the truth, then we’ll talk.”

“No, man, I’ll lose my job here, man. I can’t go to the station now!”

Bosch made a move toward him.

“Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t owe the guy anything anyway.”

“What guy?”

Reineke shrugged off any further hesitation.

“The guys you asked about. They’re all one guy. He’s a cop.”

“A cop?” Bosch asked.

“I think so. He says he is. He takes photos for the police. All the crime scenes.”

“He told you this?”

“Yeah, he told me. He said that’s why he uses all the different names when he comes in. Because it’s like moonlighting and that’s not allowed. When you came in asking about all those names, I thought you were like Internal Affairs and you were onto him.”

Bosch looked over at Rider and then back at Reineke.

“Louis, call the manager. You still have to come to the station to look at photographs.”

“Ah, come on, man! I told you everything I know. I don’t even know the guy’s real name.”

“But you know his real face. Let’s go.”

Bosch took him by the arm and started to lead him toward the door to the counter. As they approached, Edgar stepped into the studio.

“About time,” Bosch said.

“Where’s the crime scene?” Edgar said.

“There is no crime scene,” Bosch said. “We’re taking Louis here back to the station to look at photos.”

“That’s weird.”

“What is?”

“I just passed Mark Baron, the crime scene guy, coming out of the elevator. He was in a hurry. I thought he was going to get his camera.”

They found police photographer Mark Baron in his apartment in West Hollywood. The door was unlocked and open two inches. Bosch called his name and then entered. Edgar and Rider were with him.

After overhearing Reineke tell Bosch and Edgar about the police photographer who used phony names to take Hollywood headshots of young women, Baron had rushed home, gone into the bedroom and gotten the gun he kept in a shoebox under his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put the muzzle into the fleshy spot under his chin. He pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.

Bosch didn’t look too long at the body of the dead photographer. Instead his eyes were drawn to the walls of the bedroom. Three of the four were covered floor to ceiling with collages of crime scene photos. All were of dead women. Next to each photo of death was a photo of life. The same woman alive and posing for him.

“Oh my God,” Rider murmured. “How long was he doing this?”

Bosch scanned the room and all of the photos of all of the different women. He didn’t want to guess.

“I better call this in to the captain,” Edgar said.

He left the room. Bosch continued to look. Finally, he found the headshot photo of Lizbeth Grayson on the wall. A photo of her lying dead on the bed was taped to the wall next to it.

Bosch wondered which of the photos Baron had prized the most. Dead or alive?