The Black Ice hb-2 Read online

  She abruptly stood up and walked to the sliding door to the porch. She stared through the glass out across the pass.

  “Those bastards,” she said. “They just want to drop the whole thing. Because it might embarrass somebody.”

  Bosch walked up behind her.

  “You have to tell somebody about it. Tell me.”

  “No. I can’t. You tell me everything.”

  “I’ve told you. There isn’t much else and it’s all a jumble. The file didn’t have much, other than that the DEA told Moore that black ice is coming up from Mexicali. That’s how I guessed about the fruit fly contractor. And then there’s Moore. He grew up in Calexico and Mexicali. You see? There are too many coincidences here that I don’t think are coincidences.”

  She still faced the door and he was talking to her back, but he saw the reflection of her worried face in the glass. He could smell her perfume.

  “The important thing about the file is that Moore didn’t keep it in his office or his apartment. It was in a place where someone from IAD or RHD wouldn’t find it. And when the guys on his crew found it, there was the note that said to give it to me. You understand?”

  The confused look in the glass answered for her. She turned and moved into the living room, sitting on the cushioned chair and running her hands through her hair. Harry stayed standing and paced on the wood floor in front of her.

  “Why would he write a note saying give the file to me? It wouldn’t have been a note to himself. He already knew he was putting the file together for me. So, the note was for someone else. And what does that tell us? That he either knew when he wrote it that he was going to kill himself. Or he-”

  “Knew he was going to be killed,” she said.

  Bosch nodded. “Or, at least, he knew he had gotten into something too deep. That he was in trouble. In danger.”

  “Jesus,” she said.

  Harry approached and handed her her wineglass. He bent down close to her face.

  “You have to tell me about the autopsy. Something’s wrong. I heard that bullshit press release they put out. Inconclusive. What is that shit? Since when can’t you tell if a shotgun blast to the face killed somebody or not?

  “So tell me, Teresa. We can figure out what to do.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, but Harry knew she was going to tell.

  “They told me because I wasn’t a hundred percent-Harry, you can’t reveal where you got this information. You can’t.”

  “It won’t get back to you. If I have to, I will use it to help us, but it won’t get back to you. That’s my promise.”

  “They told me not to discuss it with anyone because I couldn’t be completely sure. The assistant chief, Irving, that arrogant prick knew just where to stick it in. Talking about the County Commission deciding soon about my position. Saying they would be looking for a chief ME who knew discretion. Saying what friends he had on the commission. I’d like to take a scalpel-”

  “Never mind all of that. What was it you weren’t one hundred percent sure about?”

  She drained her wineglass. Then the story came out. She told him that the autopsy had proceeded as routine, other than the fact that in addition to the two case detectives observing it, Sheehan and Chastain from IAD, was assistant police chief Irving. She said a lab technician was also on hand to make the fingerprint comparisons.

  “The decomposition was extensive,” Teresa said. “I had to take the fingertips off and spray them with a chemical hardening agent. Collins, that’s my lab tech, was able to take prints after that. He made the comparison right there because Irving had brought exemplars. It was a match. It was Moore.”

  “What about the teeth?”

  “Dental was tough. There wasn’t much left that hadn’t been fragged. We made a comparison between a partial incisor found in the tub and some dental records Irving came up with. Moore had had a root canal and it was there. That was a match, too.”

  She said she began the autopsy after confirming the identity and immediately concluded the obvious: that damage from the double-barrel-shotgun blast was massive and fatal. Instantly. But it was while examining the material that had separated from the body that she began to question whether she could rule Moore’s death a suicide.

  “The force of the blast resulted in complete cranial displacement,” she said. “And, of course, the autopsy protocol calls for examination of all vital organs, including the brain.

  “Problem was the brain was mostly unmassed due to the wide projectile pattern. I believe I was told the pellets came from a double-barrel, side-by-side configuration. I could see that. The projectile pattern was very wide. Nevertheless, a large portion of the frontal lobe and corresponding skull fragment were left largely intact, though it had been separated.

  “You know what I mean? The diagram said this had been charted in the bathtub. Is this… too much? I know you knew him.”

  “Not that well. Go on.”

  “So I examined this piece, not really expecting anything more than what I was seeing earlier. But I was wrong. There was hemorrhagic demarcation in the lobe along the skull lining.”

  She took a hit off his wineglass and breathed heavily, as if casting out a demon.

  “And so, you see Harry, that was a big fucking problem.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “You sound like Irving. ‘Tell me why. Tell me why.’ Well, it should be obvious. For two reasons. First of all you don’t have that much hemorrhage on instant death like that. There is not much bleeding in the brain lining when the brain has been literally disconnected from the body in a split second. But while there is some room for some debate on that-I’ll give that to Irving-there is no debate whatsoever on the second reason. This hemorrhaging was clearly indicative of a contre-coup injury to the head. No doubt in my mind at all.”

  Harry quickly reviewed the physics he had learned over the ten years he had been watching autopsies. Contre-coup brain injury is damage that occurs to the side of the brain opposite the insult. The brain, in effect, was a Jell-O mold inside the skull. A jarring blow to the left side often did its worst damage to the right side because the force of impact pushed the Jell-O against the right side of the skull. Harry knew that for Moore to have the hemorrhage Teresa described to the front of the brain, he would have to be struck from behind. A shotgun blast to the face would not have done it.

  “Is there any way…,” he trailed off, unclear of what he wanted to ask. He suddenly became aware of his body’s pangs for a cigarette and smacked the end of a fresh pack on his palm.

  “What happened?” he asked as he opened it.

  “Well, when I started explaining, Irving got all uptight and kept asking, ‘Are you sure? Is that a hundred percent accurate? Aren’t we jumping the gun?’ and on and on like that. I think it was pretty clear. He didn’t want this to be anything other than a suicide. The minute I raised a doubt he started talking about jumping to conclusions and the need to move slowly. He said the department could be embarrassed by what an investigation could lead to if we did not proceed slowly and cautiously and correctly. Those were his words. Asshole.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Bosch said.

  “Right. So I just flat-out told them I was not going to rule it a suicide. And then… then they talked me out of ruling it a homicide. So that’s where the inconclusive comes from. A compromise. For now. It makes me feel like I am guilty of something. Those bastards.”

  “They’re just going to drop it,” Bosch said.

  He couldn’t figure it out. The reluctance had to be because of the IAD investigation. Whatever Moore was into, Irving must believe it either led him to kill himself or got him killed. And either way Irving didn’t want to open that box without knowing first what was in it. Maybe he never wanted to know. That told Bosch one thing: he was on his own. No matter what he came up with, turning it over to Irving and RHD would get it buried. So if Bosch went on with it, he was freelancing.

  “Do they k
now that Moore was working on something for you?” Teresa asked.

  “By now they do, but they probably didn’t when they were with you. Probably won’t make any difference.”

  “What about the Juan Doe case? About him finding the body.”

  “I don’t know what they know on that.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. What will you do?”

  She was silent for a long time, then she got up and walked to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the lips. She whispered, “Let’s forget about all of this for a while.”

  * * *

  He conceded to her in their lovemaking, letting her lead and direct him, use his body the way she wanted. They had been together often enough so that they were comfortable and knew each other’s ways. They were beyond the stages of curiosity or embarrassment. At the end, she was straddled over him as he leaned back, propped on pillows, against the headboard. Her head snapped back and her clipped nails dug painlessly into his chest. She made no sound at all.

  In the darkness he looked up and saw the glint of silver dripping from her ears. He reached up and touched the earrings and then ran his hands down her throat, over her shoulders and breasts. Her skin was warm and damp. Her slow methodical motion drew him further into the void where everything else in the world could not go.

  When they were both resting, she still huddled on top of him, a sense of guilt came over him. He thought of Sylvia Moore. A woman he had met only the night before, how could she intrude on this? But she had. He wondered where the guilt came from. Maybe it was for what was still ahead of them.

  He thought he heard the short, high-pitched bark of the coyote in the distance behind the house. Teresa raised her head off his chest and then they heard the animal’s lonesome baying.

  “Timido,” he heard her say quietly.

  Harry felt the guilt pass over him again. He thought of Teresa. Had he tricked her into telling him? He didn’t think so. Maybe, again, it was guilt over what he had not yet done. What he knew he would do with the information she had given.

  She seemed to know his thoughts were away from her. Perhaps a change in his heartbeat, a slight tensing in his muscles.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You asked what I was going to do. Nothing. I’m not going to get involved in this bullshit any further. If they want to bury it, let them bury it.”

  Harry knew then that she would make a good permanent chief medical examiner for the county of Los Angeles.

  He felt himself falling away from her in the dark.

  Teresa rolled off him and sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the three-quarter moon. They had left the curtain open. The coyote howled once more. Bosch thought he could hear a dog answering somewhere in the distance.

  “Are you like him?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Timido. Alone out there in the dark world.”

  “Sometimes. Everybody is sometimes.”

  “Yes, but you like it, don’t you?”

  “Not always.”

  “Not always…”

  He thought about what to say. The wrong word and she’d be gone.

  “I’m sorry if I’m distant,” he tried. “There’s a lot of things…”

  He didn’t finish. There was no excuse.

  “You do like living up here in this little, lonely house, with the coyote as your only friend, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. The face of Sylvia Moore inexplicably came back into his mind. But this time he felt no guilt. He liked seeing her there.

  “I have to go,” Teresa said. “Long day tomorrow.”

  He watched her walk naked into the bathroom, picking her purse up off the night table as she went. He listened as the shower ran. He imagined her in there, cleaning all traces of him off and out of her and then splashing on the all-purpose perfume she always carried in her purse to cover up any smells left on her from her job.

  He rolled to the side of the bed to the pile of his clothes on the floor and got out his phone book. He dialed while the water still ran. The voice that answered was dulled with sleep. It was near midnight.

  “You don’t know who this is and I never talked to you.”

  There was silence while Harry’s voice registered.

  “Okay, okay. Got it. I understand.”

  “There’s a problem on the Cal Moore autopsy.”

  “Shit, I know that, man. Inconclusive. You don’t have to wake me up to-”

  “No, you don’t understand. You are confusing the autopsy with the press release on the autopsy. Two different things. Understand now?”

  “Yeah… I think I do. So, what’s the problem?”

  “The assistant chief of police and the acting chief ME don’t agree. One says suicide, the other homicide. Can’t have both. I guess that’s what you call inconclusive in a press release.”

  There was a low whistling sound in the phone.

  “This is good. But why would the cops want to bury a homicide, especially one of their own? I mean, suicide makes the department look like shit as it is. Why bury a murder unless it means there’s something-”

  “Right,” Bosch said and he hung up the phone.

  A minute later the shower was turned off and Teresa came out, drying herself with a towel. She was totally unabashed about her nakedness with him and Harry found he missed that shyness. It had eventually left all the women he became involved with before they eventually left him.

  He pulled on blue jeans and a T-shirt while she dressed. Neither spoke. She looked at him with a thin smile and then he walked her out to her car.

  “So, we still have a date for New Year’s Eve?” she asked after he opened the car door for her.

  “Of course,” he said, though he knew she would call with an excuse to cancel it.

  She leaned up and kissed him on the lips, then slipped into the driver’s seat.

  “Good– bye, Teresa,” he said, but she had already closed the door.

  * * *

  It was midnight when he came back inside. The place smelled of her perfume. And his own guilt. He put Frank Morgan’sMood Indigo on the CD player and stood there in the living room without moving, just listening to the phrasing on the first solo, a song called “Lullaby.” Bosch thought he knew nothing truer than the sound of a saxophone.

  Chapter 11

  Sleep was not a possibility. Bosch knew this. He stood on the porch looking down on the carpet of lights and let the chill air harden his skin and his resolve. For the first time in months he felt invigorated. He was in the hunt again. He let everything about the cases pass through his mind and made a mental list of people he had to see and things he had to do.

  On top was Lucius Porter, the broken-down detective whose pullout was too timely, too coincidental to be coincidental. Harry realized he was becoming angry just thinking about Porter. And embarrassed. Embarrassed at having stuck his neck out for him with Pounds.

  He went to his notebook and then dialed Porter’s number one more time. He was not expecting an answer and he wasn’t disappointed. Porter had at least been reliable in that respect. He checked the address he had written down earlier and headed out.

  Driving down out of the hills he did not pass another car until he reached Cahuenga. He headed north and got on the Hollywood Freeway at Barham. The freeway was crowded but not so that traffic was slow. The cars moved northward at a steady clip, a sleekly moving ribbon of lights. Out over Studio City, Bosch could see a police helicopter circling, a shaft of white light cast downward on a crime scene somewhere. It almost seemed as if the beam was a leash that held the circling craft from flying high and away.

  He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out bu
t no one looked in.

  There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon night. So many ways to live. And to die. You could be riding in the back of a studio’s black limo, or just as easily the back of the coroner’s blue van. The sound of applause was the same as the buzz of a bullet spinning past your ear in the dark. That randomness. That was L.A.

  There was flash fire and flash flood, earthquake, mudslide. There was the drive-by shooter and the crack-stoked burglar. The drunk driver and the always curving road ahead. There were killer cops and cop killers. There was the husband of the woman you were sleeping with. And there was the woman. At any moment on any night there were people being raped, violated, maimed. Murdered and loved. There was always a baby at his mother’s breast. And, sometimes, a baby alone in a Dumpster.

  Somewhere.

  Harry exited on Vanowen in North Hollywood and went east toward Burbank. Then he turned north again into a neighborhood of rundown apartments. Bosch could tell by the gang graffiti it was a mostly Latino neighborhood. He knew Porter had lived here for years. It was all he could afford after paying alimony and for his booze.

  He turned into the Happy Valley Trailer Park and found Porter’s double-wide at the end of Greenbriar Lane. The trailer was dark, not even a light on above the door, and there was no car under the aluminum-roofed carport. Bosch sat in his car smoking a cigarette and watching for a while. He heard mariachi music wafting into the neighborhood from one of the Mexican clubs over on Lankershim. Soon it was drowned out by a jet that lumbered by overhead on its way to Burbank Airport. He reached into the glove compartment for a leather pouch containing his flashlight and picks and got out.

  After the third knock went unanswered, Harry opened the pouch. Breaking into Porter’s place did not give him pause. Porter was a player in this game, not an innocent. To Bosch’s mind, Porter had forfeited protection of his privacy when he had not been straight with him, when he hadn’t mentioned that Moore had been the one who found Juan Doe #67’s body. Now Bosch was going to find Porter and ask him about that.