The Last Coyote (23 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

BOSCH WAS NUMB
to most of what was going on around him. After they reached Parker Center he was escorted up to Irving’s office on the sixth floor and then placed in a chair in the adjoining conference room. He was in there alone for a half hour before Brockman and Toliver came in. Brockman sat directly across from Bosch, Toliver to Harry’s right. It was obvious to Bosch by their being in Irving’s conference room instead of an IAD interview room that Irving wanted to keep a tight control on this one. If it turned out to be a cop-killed-cop case, he’d need all the control he could muster to contain it. It could be a publicity debacle to rival those of the Rodney King days.

Through his daze and the jarring images of Pounds being dead, a pressing thought finally got Bosch’s attention: he was in serious trouble himself. He told himself he couldn’t retreat into a shell. He must be alert. The man sitting across from him would like nothing better than to hang a killing on Bosch and he was willing to go to any extreme to do it. It wasn’t good enough that Bosch knew in his own mind that he had not, at least physically, killed Pounds. He had to defend himself. And so he resolved that he would show Brockman nothing. He would be just as tough as anybody in the room. He cleared his throat and began before Brockman got the chance.

“When did it happen?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“I can save you time, Brockman. Tell me when it happened and I’ll tell you where I was. We’ll get this over with. I understand why I’m a suspect. I won’t hold it against you but you’re wasting your time.”

“Bosch, don’t you feel anything at all? A man is dead. You worked with him.”

Bosch stared at him a long moment before answering in an even voice.

“What I feel doesn’t matter. Nobody deserves to be killed, but I’m not going to miss him and I certainly won’t miss working for him.”

“Jesus.” Brockman shook his head. “The man had a wife, a kid in college.”

“Maybe they won’t miss him, either. You never know. The guy was a prick at work. No reason to expect him to be anything else at home. What’s your wife think about you, Brockman?”

“Save it, Bosch. I’m not falling for any of your—”

“Do you believe in God, Brickman?”

Bosch used Brockman’s nickname in the department, awarded to him for his methodical way of building cases against other cops, like the late Bill Connors.

“This isn’t about me or what I believe in, Bosch. We’re talking about you.”

“That’s right, we’re talking about me. So, I’ll tell you what I think. I’m not sure what I believe. My life’s more than half over and I still haven’t figured it out. But the theory I’m leaning toward is that everybody on this planet has some kind of energy that makes them what they are. It’s all about energy. And when you die, it just goes somewhere else. And Pounds? He was bad energy and now it’s gone somewhere else. So I don’t feel too bad about him dying, to answer your question. But I’d like to know where that bad energy went. Hope you didn’t get any, Brickman. You already have a lot.”

He winked at Brockman and saw the momentary confusion in the IAD detective’s face as he tried to interpret what the jibe had meant. He seemed to shake it off and go on.

“Enough of the bullshit. Why did you confront Lieutenant Pounds in his office on Thursday? You know that was off limits while you are on leave.”

“Well, it was kind’ve like one of those Catch-22 situations. I think that’s what they call ’em. It was off limits to go there but then Pounds, my commanding officer, called me up and told me I had to turn in my car. See, it was that bad energy working. I was already on involuntary leave but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to take my car, too. So I brought him in the keys. He was my supervisor and it was an order. So going there broke one of the rules but not going would have broken one, too.”

“Why’d you threaten him?”

“I didn’t.”

“He filed an addendum to the assault complaint of two weeks earlier.”

“I don’t care what he filed. There was no threat. The guy was a coward. He probably felt threatened. But there was no threat. There is a difference.”

Bosch looked over at the other suit. Toliver. It looked as if he was going to be silent the whole time. That was his role. He just stared at Bosch as if he were a TV screen.

Bosch looked around the rest of the room and for the first time noticed the phone on the banquette to the left of the table. The green light signaled a conference call was on. The interview was being piped out of the room. Probably to a tape recorder. Probably to Irving in his office next door.

“There is a witness,” Brockman said.

“To what?”

“The threat.”

“I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant, why don’t you tell me exactly what the threat was so I know what we’re talking about. After all, if you believe I made it, what’s wrong with me knowing what it was I said?”

Brockman gave it some thought before answering.

“Very simple, as most are, you told him if he ever, quote, fucked with you again, you’d kill him. Not too original.”

“But damning as hell, right? Well, fuck you, Brockman, I never said that. I don’t doubt that that asshole wrote up an addendum, that was just his style, but whoever this wit is you got, they’re full of shit.”

“You know Henry Korchmar?”

“Henry Korchmar?”

Bosch had no idea whom he was talking about. Then he realized Brockman meant old Henry of the Nod Squad. Bosch had never known his last name and so hearing it in this context had confused him.

“The old guy? He wasn’t in the room. He’s no witness. I told him to get out and he did. Whatever he told you, he probably backed Pounds because he was scared. But he wasn’t there. You go ahead with it, Brockman. I’ll be able to pull twelve people out of that squadroom who watched the whole thing through the glass.

And they’ll say Henry wasn’t in there, they’ll say Pounds was a liar and everybody knew it, and then where’s your threat?”

Brockman said nothing into the silence so Bosch continued.

“See, you didn’t do your work. My guess is that you know everybody who works in that squadroom thinks people like you are the bottom feeders of this department. They’ve got more respect for the people they put in jail. And you know that, Brickman, so you were too intimidated to go to them. Instead, you rely on some old man’s word and he probably didn’t even know Pounds was dead when you talked to him.”

Bosch could tell by the way Brockman’s eyes darted away that he had nailed him. Empowered with the victory, he stood up and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get some water.”

“Jerry, go with him.”

Bosch paused at the door and looked back.

“What, do you think I’m going to run, Brockman? You think that and you don’t know the first thing about me. You think that and you haven’t prepared for this interview. Why don’t you come over to Hollywood one day and I’ll teach you how to interview murder suspects. Free of charge.”

Bosch walked out, Toliver following. At the water fountain down the hall, he took a long drink of water and then wiped his mouth with his hand. He felt nervous, frayed. He didn’t know how long it would be before Brockman could see through the front he was putting up.

As he walked back to the conference room, Toliver stayed a silent three paces behind him.

“You’re still young,” Bosch said over his shoulder. “There might be a chance for you, Toliver.”

Bosch stepped back into the conference room just as Brockman stepped through a door from the other side of the room. Bosch knew it was a direct entrance to Irving’s office. He had once worked an investigation of a serial killer out of this room and under Irving’s thumb.

Both men sat down across from each other again.

“Now, then,” Brockman started. “I’m going to read you your rights, Detective Bosch.”

He took a small card from his wallet and proceeded to read to Bosch the Miranda warning. Bosch knew for sure the phone line was going to a tape recorder. This was something they would want on tape.

“Now,” Brockman said when he was finished. “Do you agree to waive those rights and talk to us about this situation?”

“It’s a situation now, huh? I thought it was a murder. Yeah, I’ll waive.”

“Jerry, go get a waiver, I don’t have one here.”

Jerry got up and left through the hallway door. Bosch could hear his feet moving quickly on the linoleum, then a door open. He was taking the stairs down to IAD on the fifth.

“Uh, let’s start by—”

“Don’t you want to wait until you have your witness back? Or is this being secretly recorded without my knowledge?”

This immediately flustered Brockman.

“Yes, Bosch it’s being sec—it’s being recorded. But not secretly. We told you before we started that we’d be taping.”

“Good cover-up, Lieutenant. That last line, that was a good one. I’ll have to remember that one.”

“Now, let’s start with—”

The door opened and Toliver came in with a sheet of paper. He handed it to Brockman, who studied it a moment, made sure it was the correct form and slid it across the table to Bosch. Harry grabbed it and quickly scribbled a signature on the appropriate line. He was familiar with the form. He slid it back and Brockman put it off to the side of the table without looking at it. So he didn’t notice the signature Bosch had written was “Fuck You.”

“All right, let’s get this going. Bosch, give us your whereabouts over the last seventy-two hours.”

“You don’t want to search me first, do you? How ’bout you, Jerry?”

Bosch stood up, opening his jacket so they could see he was not armed. He thought by taunting them like this they would do the exact opposite and not search him. Carrying Pounds’s badge was a piece of evidence that would probably put him in the ground if they discovered it.

“Siddown, Bosch!” Brockman barked. “We’re not going to search you. We’re trying to give you every benefit of the doubt but you make it damn hard.”

Bosch sat back down, relieved for the time being.

“Now, just give us your whereabouts. We don’t have all day.”

Bosch thought about this. He was surprised by the window of time they wanted. Seventy-two hours. He wondered what had happened to Pounds and why they hadn’t narrowed time of death to a shorter span.

“Seventy-two hours ago. Well, about seventy-two hours ago it was Friday afternoon and I was in Chinatown at the Fifty-One-Fifty building. Which reminds me, I’m due over there in ten minutes. So, boys, if you’ll excuse me…”

He stood up.

“Siddown, Bosch. That’s been taken care of. Sit down.”

Bosch sat down and said nothing. He realized, though, that he actually felt disappointed he would miss the session with Carmen Hinojos.

“Come on, Bosch, let’s hear it. What happened after that?”

“I don’t remember all the details. But I ate over at the Red Wind that night, also stopped at the Epicentre for a few drinks. Then I got to the airport about ten. I took a red-eye to Florida, to Tampa, spent the weekend there and got back about an hour and a half before I found you people illegally inside my home.”

“It’s not illegal. We had a warrant.”

“I’ve been shown no warrant.”

“Never mind that, what do you mean you were in Florida?”

“I guess I mean I was in Florida. What do you think it means?”

“You can prove this?”

Bosch reached into his pocket, took out his airline folder with the ticket receipt and slid it across the table.

“For starters there’s the ticket receipt. I think there’s one in there for a rental car, too.”

Brockman quickly opened the ticket folder and started reading.

“What were you doing there?” he asked without looking up.

“Dr. Hinojos, that’s the company shrink, said I should try to get away. And I thought, how ’bout Florida? I’d never been there and all my life I’ve liked orange juice. I thought, what the hell? Florida.”

Brockman was flustered again. He wasn’t expecting something like this. Bosch could tell. Most cops never realized how important the initial interview with a suspect or witness was to an investigation. It informed all other interviews and even court testimony that followed. You had to be prepared. Like lawyers, you had to know most of the answers before you asked the questions. The IAD relied so much on its presence as an intimidating factor that most of the detectives assigned to the division never really had to prepare for interviews. And when they hit a wall like this, they didn’t know what to do.

“Okay, Bosch, uh, what did you do in Florida?”

“You ever heard that song Marvin Gaye sang? Before he got killed? It’s called—”

“What are you talking about?”

“—‘Sexual Healing.’ It says it’s good for the soul.”

“I’ve heard it,” Toliver said.

Both Brockman and Bosch looked at him.

“Sorry,” he offered.

“Again, Bosch,” Brockman said. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about that I spent most of the time with a woman I know there. Most of the other time I spent with a fishing guide on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. What I’m talking about, asshole, is that I was with people almost every minute. And the times I wasn’t weren’t long enough for me to fly back here and kill Pounds. I don’t even know when he was killed but I’ll tell you right now you don’t have a case, Brockman, because there is no case. You’re looking in the wrong direction.”

Bosch had chosen his words carefully. He was unsure what, if anything, they knew about his private investigation and he wasn’t going to give them anything if he could help it. They had the murder book and the evidence box but he thought that he might be able to explain all of that away. They also had his notebook because he had stuffed it into his overnighter at the airport. In it were the names, numbers and addresses of Jasmine and McKittrick, the address of the Eno house in Vegas, and other notes about the case. But they might not be able to put together what it all meant. Not if he was lucky.

Brockman pulled a notebook and pen from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Okay, Bosch, give me the name of the woman and this fishing guide. I need their numbers, everything.”