Trunk Music (45 page)

“No. I don’t even want to look at him if I can help it. You didn’t promise him anything, did you?”

Bosch was about to answer but stopped. There was the sound of muffled yelling that he could tell was coming from Powers, still sequestered in room three. He looked through the glass of the lieutenant’s office and saw Edgar get up from the homicide table and go down the hall to check it out.

“He probably wants his lawyer now,” Bosch said. “Well, it’s a little late for that…Anyway, no, I made no promises. I did tell him I’d talk to the DA about dropping special circs, but that’s going to be tough. With what he told me in there, we can take our pick. Conspiracy to commit, lying in wait, murder for hire maybe.”

“I guess I should get a DA in here.”

“Yeah. If you don’t have anyone in mind or anybody you owe a hot case to, put in a request for Roger Goff. This is his kind of case and I’ve owed him one for a while. He won’t blow it.”

“I know Roger. I’ll ask for him…. I have to call out the brass, too. It’s not every day you get to call a deputy chief and tell him not only have your people been running an investigation they were specifically told to stay away from, but that they’ve arrested a cop to boot. And for murder, no less.”

Bosch smiled. He would not relish having to make such a call.

“It’s really going to hit the fan this time,” he said. “One more black eye for the department. By the way, they didn’t seize any of it because it’s not related to this case, but Jerry and Kiz found some scary stuff in Powers’s place. Nazi paraphernalia, white-power stuff. You might alert the brass about that, so they can do with it what they want.”

“Thanks for telling me. I’ll talk to Irving. I’m sure he won’t want that to see the light of day.”

Edgar leaned in through the open door.

“Powers says he’s got to take a leak and can’t hold it any longer.”

He was looking at Billets.

“Well, take him,” she said.

“Keep him hooked,” Bosch added.

“How’s he gonna piss, his hands behind his back? Don’t be expecting me to be taking it out for him. No way.”

Billets laughed.

“Just move the cuffs to the front,” Bosch said. “Give me a second to finish in here and I’ll be right there.”

“Okay, I’ll be in three.”

Edgar left and Bosch watched him through the glass as he walked to the hallway leading to the interview rooms. Bosch looked back at Billets, who was still smiling at Edgar’s comical protest. Bosch put a serious look on his face.

“You know, you can use me when you make that call.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you want to say you didn’t know about any of this until I called you this morning with the bad news, that’s cool with me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We cleared a murder and got a killer cop off the street. If they can’t see that the good in this outweighs the bad, then…well, fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.”

Bosch smiled and nodded.

“You’re cool, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“And it’s Grace.”

“Right. Grace.”

Bosch was thinking about how much he liked Billets as he walked down the short hallway to the interview rooms and into the open door of room three. Edgar was just closing the cuffs on Powers’s wrists. His hands were in front of him now.

“Do me a favor, Bosch,” Powers said. “Let me use the can in the front hallway.”

“What for?”

“So nobody’ll see me in the back. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. Besides, you might have a problem if people don’t like what they see.”

Bosch nodded. Powers had a point. If they took him to the locker room, then all the cops in the watch office would likely see them and there would be questions, maybe even anger from some of the cops who didn’t know what was going on. The bathroom in the front hallway was a public rest room, but this early on a Sunday morning it would likely be empty and they could take Powers in and out of there without being seen.

“Okay, let’s go,” Bosch said. “To the front.”

They walked him past the front counter and down the hallway past the administration offices, which were empty and closed for the day. While Bosch stayed with Powers in the hall, Edgar checked the rest room out.

“It’s empty,” he said, holding the door open from inside.

Bosch followed Powers in and the big cop went to the furthest of three urinals. Bosch stayed by the door and Edgar took a position on the other side of Powers by the row of sinks. When Powers was finished at the urinal, he stepped toward one of the sinks. As he walked, Bosch saw that his right shoelace was untied and so did Edgar.

“Tie your shoe, Powers,” Edgar said. “You trip and fall and break your pretty face, I don’t want any cryin’ ’bout
po
-lice brutality.”

Powers stopped and looked down at the shoelace on the floor and then at Edgar.

“Sure,” he said.

Powers first washed his hands, used a paper towel to dry them and then brought his right foot up on the edge of the sink to tie his shoe.

“New shoes,” Edgar said. “Laces on ’em always come undone, don’t they?”

Bosch couldn’t see Powers’s face because the cop’s back was turned toward the door. But he was looking up at Edgar.

“Fuck you, nigger.”

It was almost as if he had slapped Edgar, whose face immediately filled with revulsion and anger. He looked over at Bosch, a quick glance to judge whether Bosch was going to do anything about his plan to hit Powers. But it was all the time Powers needed. He sprang away from the sink and threw his body into Edgar, pinning him against the white-tiled wall. His cuffed hands came up and the left one grabbed a handful of the front of Edgar’s shirt while the right pressed the barrel of a small gun into the stunned detective’s throat.

Bosch had covered half of the distance to them when he saw the gun and Powers began to shout.

“Back off, Bosch. Back off or you got a dead partner. You want that?”

Powers had turned his head so that he was looking back at Bosch. Bosch stopped and raised his hands away from his body.

“That’s it,” Powers said. “Now this is what you’re going to do. Take your gun out real slowly and drop it in that first sink there.”

Bosch made no move.

“Do it. Now.”

Powers spoke with measured force, careful to keep his voice low.

Bosch looked at the tiny gun in Powers’s hand. He recognized it as a Raven .25, a favored throw-down gun among patrol cops going back to at least his own time in a uniform. It was small — it looked like a toy in Powers’s hand — but deadly and it fit snugly into a sock or boot, virtually unseen with the pants leg pulled down. As Bosch came to the realization that Edgar and Rider had not completely searched Powers, he also knew that a shot from the Raven at point-blank range would certainly kill Edgar. It was against all his instincts to give up his weapon, but he saw no alternative. Powers was desperate and Bosch knew desperate men didn’t think things out. They went against the odds. They were killers. With two fingers he slowly removed his gun and dropped it into the sink.

“That’s real good, Bosch. Now I want you to get on the floor underneath the sinks.”

Bosch did as he was told, never taking his eyes off Powers as he moved.

“Edgar,” Powers said. “Now your turn. You can just go ahead and drop yours on the floor.”

Edgar’s gun hit the tile.

“Now, you get under there with your partner. That’s it.”

“Powers, this is crazy,” Bosch said. “Where’re you going to go? You can’t run.”

“Who’s talking about running, Bosch? Take out your cuffs and put one on your left wrist.”

After Bosch had complied, Powers told him to loop the cuffs through one of the sink trap pipes. He then told Edgar to put the free cuff around his right wrist. He did so and then Powers smiled.

“There, that’s good. That ought to hold you guys for a few minutes. Now, give me your keys. Both of you, throw ’em out here.”

Powers picked Edgar’s set up off the floor and unlocked the cuffs around his wrists. He quickly massaged them to get the circulation going. He was smiling but Bosch wondered if he even knew it.

“Now, let’s see.”

He reached into the sink and grabbed Bosch’s gun.

“This is a nice one, Bosch. Nice weight, balance. Beats mine. Mind if I borrow it for a couple minutes?”

Bosch knew then what he was planning to do. He was going for Veronica. Bosch thought of Kiz sitting at the homicide table, her back to the front counter. And Billets in her office. They wouldn’t see him until it was too late.

“She’s not here, Powers,” he said.

“What? Who?”

“Veronica. It was a scam. We never even picked her up.”

Powers was silent as the smile dropped away and was replaced with a serious look of concentration. Bosch knew what he was thinking.

“The voice came from one of her movies. I taped it off the videotape. You go back to those interview rooms and it’s a dead end. There’s nobody back there and no way out.”

Bosch saw the same tightening of skin around Powers’s face that he had seen before. His face grew dark with blood and anger, then, inexplicably, the smile suddenly creased across it.

“You smart fucker, Bosch. Is that so? You ‘spect me to believe she’s not there? Maybe this is the con, and not before. See what I’m saying?”

“It’s no con. She isn’t there. We were going to pick her up with what you told us. Went up the hill an hour ago but she’s not there either. She left last night.”

“If she’s not already here, then how…”

“That part was no scam. The money and pictures were in your house. If you didn’t put them there, then she did. She’s setting you up. Why don’t you just put the gun down and let’s start this over. You apologize to Edgar for what you called him and we drop this little incident.”

“Oh, I see. You drop the escape but I still get hit with the murder.”

“I told you, we’re going to talk to the DA. We got one coming in right now. He’s a friend. He’ll do right by you. She’s the one we really want.”

“You fucking asshole!” Powers said loudly. He then brought his voice back into check. “Don’t you see that I want her? You think you beat me? You think you broke me down in there? You didn’t win, Bosch. I talked because I wanted to talk. I broke you, man, but you didn’t know it. You started trusting me because you needed me. You should’ve never moved the cuffs, brother.”

He was silent a moment, letting that sink in.

“Now I’ve got an appointment with that bitch that I’m going to keep no matter what. She ain’t here, then I’ll go find her.”

“She could be anywhere.”

“So could I, Bosch, and she won’t see me coming. I have to go.”

Powers grabbed the plastic bag out of the trash can and emptied it on the floor. He put Bosch’s gun into the bag, then turned the faucets in all three sinks on full blast. The cascading water created a cacophony as it echoed off the tile walls. Powers picked up Edgar’s gun and put it in the bag. He then wrapped the bag around itself several times, concealing the two guns inside. He put the Raven in his front pocket for easy access, threw the handcuff keys into one of the urinals and flushed each one. Without even looking at the two men handcuffed under the sink, he headed to the door.

“Adios, dipshits,” he threw over his shoulder and then he was gone.

Bosch looked at Edgar. He knew that if they yelled, it was likely they wouldn’t be heard. It was a Sunday, the administration wing was empty. And in the bureau there were only Billets and Rider. With the water running, their shouts would probably be unintelligible. Billets and Rider would probably think it was the normal yelling from the drunk tank.

Bosch swiveled around and braced his feet on the wall beneath the sink counter. He grabbed the trap pipe so that he could use his legs as leverage in an attempt to pull the pipe free. But the pipe was burning hot.

“Son of a bitch!” Bosch yelled as he let go. “He turned the hot water on.”

“What are we going to do? He’s getting away.”

“Your arms are longer. See if you can reach up there and turn off the water. It’s too hot. I can’t grab the pipe.”

With Bosch feeding his arm almost up to the elbow through the pipe loop, Edgar was barely able to touch the faucet. It took him several seconds to turn the water down to a trickle.

“Now turn on the cold,” Bosch said. “Cool this thing down.”

It took another few seconds, but then Bosch was ready to try again. He grabbed the pipe and pushed against the wall with his legs. As he did this, Edgar squeezed his hands around the pipe and did the same. The added muscle broke the pipe free along the seal beneath the sink. Water sloshed down on them as they threaded the cuffs chain through the pipe break. They got up and slid along the tile to the urinal, where Bosch saw his keys on the bottom grate. He grabbed them up and fumbled with them until he had the cuff off. He handed the keys to Edgar and ran toward the door, sloshing through the water that had completely spread across it.

“Turn off the water,” he yelled as he hit the door.

Bosch ran down the hallway and vaulted over the detective bureau front counter. The squad room was empty and through the glass he saw the lieutenant’s office was vacant. He then heard a loud pounding and the muffled shouts of Rider and Billets. He ran down the hallway to the interview rooms and found all the doors open but one. He knew Powers had checked for Veronica Aliso anyway after locking Billets and Rider in room thrree. He opened the door to three and then quickly ran back through the squad room into the station house’s rear hallway. He slammed through the heavy metal door and into the back parking yard. Instinctively reaching to his empty shoulder holster, he scanned the parking lot and the open bays of the garage. There was no sign of Powers, but there were two patrol officers standing near the gas pumps. Bosch focused on them.

“You seen Powers?”

“Yeah,” said the older of the two. “He just left. With our fucking car. What the fuck’s going on?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He closed his eyes, bowed his head and cursed silently to himself.

Six hours later, Bosch, Edgar and Rider sat at the homicide table, silently watching the meeting taking place in the lieutenant’s office. Huddled in the small office like people on a bus were Billets, Captain LeValley, Deputy Chief Irving, three IAD investigators including Chastain, and the chief of police and his administrative aide. Deputy District Attorney Roger Goff had been consulted on the speakerphone — Bosch had heard his voice through the open door. But then the door was closed and Bosch was sure the group was deciding the fate of the three detectives sitting outside.