The Drop (21 page)

“Yes, sir.”

Bosch turned and headed back toward the gate. Chu followed. When they got to the car, Bosch looked over the car roof at the building for a long moment before ducking into the driver’s seat.

“Do you believe him?” Chu asked.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “I guess I do.”

“So then, what do you think?”

“I think we’re missing something. Let’s go see Clayton Pell.”

He turned the car on and pulled away from the curb. As he steered back toward the freeway, he had the navy-and-white-striped awnings in his mind’s eye.

22

I
t was one of the few times he let Chu drive. Bosch was in the backseat with Clayton Pell. He wanted to be close to him in case of a violent reaction. When Pell had seen the photo lineups earlier and picked Chilton Hardy’s photo out each time, he had disappeared behind a wall of controlled rage. Bosch could sense it and he wanted to be close in case he had to do something about it.

Hannah Stone rode in the front passenger seat and from his position Bosch could watch both Pell and her. Stone had a concerned look on her face. The reopening of Pell’s old wounds was clearly weighing on her.

Bosch and Chu had choreographed the drive before arriving at the Buena Vista to pick up Pell. From the halfway center they first drove to Travel Town in Griffith Park so that they could begin the tour with Pell seeing what appeared to be one of the places of good memories of his young life. Pell wanted to get out and watch the trains, but Bosch said no, they were on a schedule. The truth was, he didn’t want to allow Pell to watch the children on the train rides.

Now Chu turned right onto Cahuenga and started heading north toward the address they had traced Chilton Hardy to during the time period Pell lived with him. By the prearranged plan, they would not point out the apartment building to Pell. They would simply see if he recognized it on his own.

When they were two blocks away Pell showed the first stirring of recognition.

“Yes, this is where we lived. I thought that place was a school and I wanted to go there.”

He pointed out the window at a private day-care center that had a swing set in front behind a wire fence. Bosch could understand how an eight-year-old might think it was a school.

They were coming up to the apartment building now. It was on Pell’s side. Chu took his foot off the gas pedal and started to coast, which Bosch thought was a giveaway, but they went right by the address without a word from Pell.

It wasn’t a case catastrophe but Bosch was disappointed. He was thinking in terms of a prosecution. If he was able to testify that Pell pointed out the apartment building without any help, that would bolster Pell’s story. If they had to specifically point the place out to Pell, a defense attorney would be able to contend that Pell was manipulating the police and creating his testimony out of a revenge fantasy.

“Anything yet?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, I think we might’ve just passed it but I’m not sure.”

“You want us to turn around?”

“Is that all right?”

“Sure. Which side were you looking at?”

“My side.”

Bosch nodded. Now things were looking good.

“Detective Chu,” he said. “Rather than turn around let’s go right and go around so it’s on Clayton’s side again.”

“Got it.”

Chu turned right at the next block, then took his first right and drove three blocks down. He then turned right and came back to Cahuenga at the corner where the day-care center was. He turned right again and they were only a block and a half from the address.

“Yeah, right up here,” Pell said.

Chu drove well below the speed limit. A car blasted its horn from behind and then passed them. Everyone in the police car ignored it.

“This is it,” Pell said. “I think.”

Chu pulled to the curb. It was the right address. Everyone was silent while Pell looked out the window at the Camelot Apartments. It was a two-story stucco affair with rounded faux turrets at the two front corners. It was typical of the urban-blight apartments that sprouted in the city in the boom times of the fifties. They were designed and built to last thirty years and were going on twice that now. The stucco was cracked and discolored, the roof line was no longer straight and the flap of a blue plastic tarp was tied over the top of one of the turrets as a makeshift remedy for a leaking roof.

“It was nicer back then,” Pell said.

“Are you sure it’s the right place?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, this is it. I remember it sort of looking like a castle and I was excited about living here. Except I didn’t know . . .”

His voice trailed off and he just looked at the building. He had turned halfway in his seat so his back was to Bosch. Harry saw Pell lean his forehead against the window. His shoulders then began to shake and there was a low sound almost like a whistle as he began to cry.

Bosch raised a hand and reached over to Pell’s shoulder, but then he stopped. He hesitated and pulled his hand back. Stone had been turning in her seat and she saw the move. In that split second, Bosch saw her disgust with him.

“Clayton,” she said. “It’s all right. It’s good to see this, to confront the past head-on.”

She reached over the seat and put her hand on Pell’s shoulder, doing what Bosch could not. She didn’t look at Bosch again.

“It’s all right,” she said again.

“I hope you catch the fucking bastard,” Pell said, his voice strangled with emotion.

“Don’t worry,” Bosch said. “We will.”

“I hope he dies. I hope he puts up a fight and you kill his ass.”

“Come on, Clayton,” Stone said. “Let’s not think about those kinds of—”

He slapped her hand off his shoulder.

“I want him to die!”

“No, Clayton.”

“Yes! Look at me! At what I am! It’s all because of him.”

Stone turned back in her seat and sat down.

“I think Clayton has been through enough here,” she said in a clipped tone. “Can we go back now?”

Bosch reached forward and tapped Chu on the shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Chu pulled away from the curb and headed north. The car was silent the whole way back and it was dark by the time they got back to the Buena Vista. Chu stayed in the car while Bosch walked Pell and Stone to the front gate.

“Clayton, thank you,” Bosch said as Stone used her key to open the passage. “I know that was tough on you. I appreciate your willingness to do it. It’s going to help the case.”

“Doesn’t matter if you have a case. Are you going to catch him?”

Bosch hesitated and then nodded.

“I think so. We still have some work to do but we’ll get it done and then we’ll go find him. I promise you that.”

Pell walked through the open gate without another word.

“Clayton, you should go to the kitchen and see if there’s dinner,” Stone instructed.

Pell raised a hand and waved, indicating he had heard her, as he walked off into the center courtyard. Stone turned to close the gate but Bosch was standing there. She looked up at him and Harry could read the disappointment.

“I guess we’re not having dinner,” he said.

“Why not? Your daughter?”

“No, she’s at her friend’s. But I just thought . . . I mean, I’m fine to have dinner. I just need to take my partner to his car in Studio City. You still want to meet at the restaurant?”

“Sure, but let’s not wait till eight. After that ride . . . I think I’m finished for the day.”

“All right. I’ll drop Chu off and then head over there and meet you. That okay or do you want me to come back here?”

“No, I’ll meet you there. Perfect.”

23

T
hey got into the restaurant more than a half hour before their reservation time and were given a quiet booth in a back room near a fireplace. They ordered pastas and a Chianti Hannah chose. Through the dinner the food was good and the talk small—until Stone put Bosch directly on the spot.

“Harry, why couldn’t you comfort Clayton in the car today? I saw you. You couldn’t touch him.”

Bosch took a long drink of wine before attempting an answer.

“I just didn’t think he wanted to be touched. He was upset.”

She shook her head.

“No, Harry, I saw. And I need to know why a man like you could not have any sympathy for a man like him. I need to know that before I could . . . before anything could move forward between you and me.”

Bosch looked down at his plate. He put his fork down. He felt tense. He had met this woman only two days ago yet he couldn’t deny his attraction to her or that some sort of connection had been established. He didn’t want to spoil this chance but he didn’t know what to say.

“Life is too short, Harry,” she said. “I can’t waste my time and I can’t be with someone who doesn’t understand what I do and have a basic human compassion for people who are victims.”

He finally found his voice.

“I have compassion. My job is to speak for victims like Lily Price. But what about Pell’s victims? He’s damaged people as badly as he has been damaged. Am I supposed to pat him on the back and say, There, there, it’s going to be okay? It’s not okay now and it’s never going to be okay. And the thing is, he knows it.”

He made an open-palms gesture, as if to say, This is me, this is the truth.

“Harry, do you believe there is evil in the world?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have a job if there wasn’t.”

“Where does it come from?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your job. You confront evil almost every day. Where does it come from? How do people become evil? Is it in the air? Do you catch it like you catch a cold?”

“Don’t patronize me. It’s a little more complicated than that. You know that.”

“I’m not patronizing you. I am trying to figure out how you think so that I can make a decision. I like you, Harry. A lot. Everything I’ve seen I like except what you did in the backseat of that car today. I don’t want to start something only to find out I was wrong about you.”

“So what’s this, like a job interview?”

“No. It’s me trying to get to know you.”

“It’s too much like those speed-dating things they have. You want to know everything before anything even happens. There’s something else here you’re not telling me.”

She didn’t respond right away and that told Bosch he had hit on something.

“Hannah, what is it?”

She ignored his question and insisted on her own.

“Harry, where does evil come from?”

Bosch laughed and shook his head.

“This is not what people talk about when they are trying to get to know each other. Why do you care what I think about that?”

“Because I just do. What’s your answer?”

He could see the seriousness in her eyes. This was important to her.

“Look, all I can tell you is that nobody knows where it comes from, okay? It’s just out there and it is responsible for truly awful things. And my job is to find it and take it out of the world. I don’t need to know where it comes from to do that.”

She composed her thoughts before responding.

“Well said, Harry, but not good enough. You’ve been at this for a long time. From time to time you must have thought about where the darkness in people comes from. How does the heart turn black?”

“Is this the nature-versus-nurture discussion? Because I—”

“Yes, it is. How do you vote?”

Bosch wanted to smile but somehow knew it would not be received well.

“I don’t vote because it doesn’t—”

“No, you have to vote. You really do. I want to know.”

She was leaning across the table, talking to him in an urgent whisper. She leaned back as the waiter came to the table and started to clear their plates. Bosch welcomed the interruption because it gave him time to think. They ordered coffee but no dessert. Once the waiter was gone, it was time.

“Okay, what I think is that certainly evil can be nurtured. No doubt that is what happened with Clayton Pell. But for every Pell who acts out and damages somebody, there is someone who has had the exact same childhood who never acts out and never hurts anybody. So there is something else. Another part to the equation. Are people born with something that lies dormant and comes to the surface only under certain circumstances? I don’t know, Hannah. I really don’t. And I don’t think anybody else does either. Not for sure. We only have theories, and none of it really matters in the long run because it is not going to stop the damage.”

“You mean my work is useless?”

“No, but your work—like mine—comes into play after the damage is done. Sure, your efforts will hopefully prevent a lot of these people from going out and doing it again. I do believe that and I told you so the other night. But how is it going to identify and stop the individual who has never acted out or broken a law or done anything before that warns of what’s to come? Why are we even talking about this, Hannah? Tell me what you’re not telling me.”

The waiter came back with the coffee. Hannah told him to bring their check. Bosch took this as a bad sign. She wanted to get away from him. She wanted to go.

“So that’s it. We get the check and you run away without answering the question?”

“No, Harry, that’s not it. I asked for the check because I want you to take me home with you now. But there is something you need to know about me first.”

“Then tell me.”

“I have a son, Harry.”

“I know. You said he’s up in the Bay Area.”

“Yes, I go up there to visit him in prison. He’s in San Quentin.”

Bosch couldn’t say he hadn’t expected a secret like this. But he hadn’t expected it to be her son. Maybe a former husband or partner. But not her son.

“I’m sorry, Hannah.”

It was all he could think to say. She shook her head as if to ward off his sympathy.

“He did something terrible,” she said. “Something evil. And to this day I can’t fathom where it came from or why.”

Holding the bottle of wine under his arm, Bosch unlocked the front door and held it open for her. He was acting calm but he wasn’t. They had talked about her son for almost another hour. Bosch had mostly listened. But in the end all he could do was once more offer her sympathy. Are parents responsible for the sins of their children? Often yes but not always. She was the therapist. She knew that better than he.