The Black Ice (1993) Read online

  Harry walked through the door, holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. It didn’t help. The odor that was like no other assaulted him as soon as he passed the threshold. He saw Donovan on his knees dusting fingerprint powder onto the dials of the air-conditioner unit in the wall below the room’s front, and only, window.

  “Cheers,” Donovan said. He was wearing a painter’s mask to guard against the odor and the intake of the black powder. “In the bathroom.”

  Bosch took a look around, quickly, since it was likely he would be told to leave as soon as the suits discovered him. The room’s queen-sized bed was made with a faded pink coverlet. There was a single chair with a newspaper on it. Bosch walked over and noted that it was the Times, dated six days earlier. There was a bureau and mirror combination to the side of the bed. On top of it was an ashtray with a single butt pressed into it after being half smoked. There was also a .38 Special in a nylon boot holster, a wallet and a badge case. These last three had been dusted with the black fingerprint powder. There was no note on the bureau—the place Harry would’ve expected it to be.

  “No note,” he said, more to himself than Donovan.

  “Nope. Nothing in the bathroom, either. Have a look. That is, if you don’t mind losing your Christmas dinner.”

  Harry looked down the short hallway that went to the rear off the left side of the bed. The bathroom door was on the right and he felt reluctance as he approached. He believed there wasn’t a cop alive who hadn’t thought at least once of turning his own hand cold.

  He stopped at the threshold. The body sat on the dingy white floor tile, its back propped against the tub. The first thing to register on Bosch was the boots. Gray snakeskins with bulldog heels. Moore had worn them the night they had met for drinks. One boot was still on the right foot and he could see the manufacturer’s symbol, an S like a snake, on the worn rubber heel. The left boot was off and stood upright next to the wall. The exposed foot, which was in a sock, had been wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. The sock had once been white, Bosch guessed. But now it was grayish and the limb was slightly bloated.

  On the floor next to the door jamb was a twenty-gauge shotgun with side-by-side barrels. The stock was splintered along the bottom edge. A four-inch-long sliver of wood lay on the tile and had been circled with a blue crayon by Donovan or one of the detectives.

  Bosch had no time to deliberate on these facts. He just tried to take it all in. He raised his eyes the length of the body. Moore was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. His hands were dropped at his sides. His skin was gray wax. The fingers thick with putrefaction, the forearms bulging like Popeye’s. Bosch saw a misshapen tattoo on the right arm, a devil’s grinning face below a halo.

  The body was slumped back against the tub and it almost appeared that Moore had rolled his head back as if to dip it into the tub, maybe to wash his hair. But Bosch realized it only looked that way because most of the head was simply not there. It had been destroyed by the force of the double-barrel blast. The light blue tiles that enclosed the tub area were awash in dried blood. The brown drip trails all went down into the tub. Some of the tiles were cracked where shotgun pellets had struck.

  Bosch felt the presence of someone behind him. He turned into the stare of Assistant Chief Irvin Irving. Irving was wearing no mask and holding no rag to his mouth and nose.

  “Evening, Chief.”

  Irving nodded and said, “What brings you here, Detective?”

  Bosch had seen enough to be able to put together what had happened. He stepped away from the threshold, moved around Irving and walked toward the front door. Irving followed. They passed two men from the medical examiner’s office who were wearing matching blue jumpsuits. Outside the room Harry threw his handkerchief into a trash can brought to the scene by the cops. He lit a cigarette and noticed that Irving was carrying a manila file in his hand.

  “I picked it up on my scanner,” Bosch said. “Thought I’d come out since I’m supposed to be on call tonight. It’s my division, it’s supposed to be my call.”

  “Yes, well, when it was established who was in the room, I decided to move the case to Robbery-Homicide Division immediately. Captain Grupa contacted me. I made the decision.”

  “So it’s already been established that’s Moore in there?”

  “Not quite.” He held up the manila file. “I ran by records and pulled his prints. They will be the final factor, of course. There is also the dental—if there is enough left. But all other appearances lead to that conclusion. Whoever’s in there checked in under the name Rodrigo Moya, which was the alias Moore used in BANG. And there’s a Mustang parked behind the motel that was rented under that name. At the moment, I don’t think there is much doubt here among the collective investigative team.”

  Bosch nodded. He had dealt with Irving before, when the older man was a deputy chief in command of the Internal Affairs Division. Now he was an AC, one of the top three men in the department, and his purview had been extended to include IAD, narcotics intelligence and investigation, and all detective services. Harry momentarily debated whether he should risk pushing the point about not getting the first call.

  “I should have been called,” he said anyway. “It’s my case. You took it away before I even had it.”

  “Well, Detective, it was mine to take and give away, wouldn’t you agree? There is no need to get upset. Call it streamlining. You know Robbery-Homicide handles all officer deaths. You would have had to pass it to them eventually. This saves time. There is no ulterior motive here other than expediency. That’s the body of an officer in there. We owe it to him and his family, no matter what the circumstances of his death are, to move quickly and professionally.”

  Bosch nodded again and looked around. He saw an RHD detective named Sheehan in a doorway below the MONTHLY RAT S sign near the front of the motel. He was questioning a man of about sixty who was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt despite the evening chill and chewing a sodden cigar stump. The manager.

  “Did you know him?” Irving asked.

  “Moore? No, not really. I mean, yes, I knew him. We worked the same division, so we knew each other. He was on night shift mostly, working the streets. We didn’t have much contact . . .”

  Bosch did not know why in that moment he decided to lie. He wondered if Irving had read it in his voice. He changed the subject.

  “So, it’s suicide—is that what you told the reporters?”

  “I did not tell the reporters a thing. I talked to them, yes. But I said nothing about the identity of the body in this room. And will not, until it is officially confirmed. You and I can stand here and say we are pretty sure that is Calexico Moore in there but I won’t give that to them until we’ve done every test, dotted every i on the death certificate.”

  He slapped the manila file hard on his thigh.

  “This is why I pulled his personnel file. To expedite. The prints will go with the body to the medical examiner.” Irving looked back toward the door of the motel room. “But you were inside, Detective Bosch, you tell me.”

  Bosch thought a moment. Is this guy interested, or is he just pulling my chain? This was the first time he had dealt with Irving outside of the adversarial situation of an Internal Affairs investigation. He decided to take a chance.

  “Looks like he sits down on the floor by the tub, takes off his boot and pulls both triggers with his toe. I mean, I assume it was both barrels, judging by the damage. He pulls the triggers with his toe, the recoil throws the shotgun into the door jamb, splintering off a piece of the stock. His head goes the other way. Onto the wall and into the tub. Suicide.”

  “There you go,” Irving said. “Now I can tell Detective Sheehan that you concur. Just as if you had gotten the first callout. No reason for anybody to feel left out.”

  “That’s not the point, Chief.”

  “What is the point, Detective? That you can’t go along to get along? That you do not accept the command decisions of this department? I am losing my patien
ce with you, Detective. Something I had hoped would never happen to me again.”

  Irving was standing too close to Bosch, his wintergreen breath puffing right in his face. It made Bosch feel pinned down by the man and he wondered if it was done on purpose. He stepped back and said, “But no note.”

  “No note yet. We still have some things to check.”

  Bosch wondered what. Moore’s apartment and office would have been checked when he first turned up missing. Same with his wife’s home. What was left? Could Moore have mailed a note to somebody? It would have arrived by now.

  “When did it happen?”

  “Hopefully, we’ll get an idea from the autopsy tomorrow morning. But I am guessing he did it shortly after he checked in. Six days ago. In his first interview, the manager said Moore checked in six days ago and hadn’t been seen outside the room since. This jibes with the condition of the room, the condition of the body, the date on the newspaper.”

  The autopsy was tomorrow morning. That told Bosch that Irving had this one greased. It usually took three days to get an autopsy done. And the Christmas holiday would back things up even further.

  Irving seemed to know what he was thinking.

  “The acting chief medical examiner has agreed to do it tomorrow morning. I explained there would be speculation in the media that would not be fair to the man’s wife or the department. She agreed to cooperate. After all, the acting chief wants to become the permanent chief. She knows the value of cooperation.”

  Bosch didn’t say anything.

  “So we will know then. But nobody, the manager included, saw Sergeant Moore after he checked in six days ago. He left specific instructions that he was absolutely not to be disturbed. I think he went ahead and did it shortly after checking in.”

  “So why didn’t they find him sooner?”

  “He paid for a month in advance. He demanded no disturbances. A place like this, they don’t offer daily maid service anyway. The manager thought he was a drunk who was either going to go on a binge or try to dry out. Either way, a place like this, the manager can’t be choosey. A month, that’s $600. He took the money.

  “And they made good on their promise not to go to room seven until today, when the manager’s wife noticed that Mr. Moya’s car—the Mustang—had been broken into last night. That and, of course, they were curious. They knocked on his door to tell him but he didn’t answer. They used a passkey. The smell told them what was happening as soon as they opened the door.”

  Irving said that Moore/Moya had set the air-conditioner on its highest and coldest level to slow decomposition and keep the odor contained in the room. Wet towels had been laid across the floor at the bottom of the front door to further seal the room.

  “Nobody heard the shot?” Bosch asked.

  “Not that we found. The manager’s wife is nearly deaf and he says he didn’t hear anything. They live in the last room on the other side. We’ve got stores on one side, an office building on the other. They all close at night. Alley behind. We are going through the registry and will try to track other guests that were here the first few days Moore was. But the manager says he never rented the rooms on either side of Moore’s. He figured Moore might get loud if he was detoxing cold turkey.

  “And, Detective, it is a busy street—bus stop right out front. It could have been that nobody heard a thing. Or if they heard it, didn’t know what it was.”

  After some thought, Bosch said, “I don’t get renting the place for a month. I mean, why? If the guy was going to off himself, why try to hide it for so long? Why not do it and let them find your body, end of story?”

  “That’s a tough one,” Irving said. “Near as I can figure it, he wanted to cut his wife a break.”

  Bosch raised his eyebrows. He didn’t get it.

  “They were separated,” Irving said. “Maybe he didn’t want to put this on her during the holidays. So he tried to hold up the news a couple weeks, maybe a month.”

  That seemed pretty thin to Bosch but he had no better explanation just then. He could think of nothing else to ask at that moment. Irving changed the subject, signaling that Bosch’s visit to the crime scene was over.

  “So, Detective, how is the shoulder?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I heard you went down to Mexico to polish your Spanish while you mended.”

  Bosch didn’t reply. He wasn’t interested in this banter. He wanted to tell Irving that he didn’t buy the scene, even with all the evidence and explanations that had been gathered. But he couldn’t say why, and until he could, he would be better off keeping quiet.

  Irving was saying, “I have never thought that enough of our officers—the non-Latins, of course—make a good enough effort to learn the second language of this city. I want to see the whole depart—”

  “Got a note,” Donovan called from the room.

  Irving broke away from Bosch without another word and headed to the door. Sheehan followed him into the room along with a suit Bosch recognized as an Internal Affairs detective named John Chastain. Harry hesitated a moment before following them in.

  One of the ME techs was standing in the hallway near the bathroom door with the others gathered around him. Bosch wished he hadn’t thrown away his handkerchief. He kept the cigarette in his mouth and breathed in deeply.

  “Right rear pocket,” the tech said. “There’s putrefaction but you can make it out. It was folded over twice so the inside surface is pretty clean.”

  Irving backed out of the hallway holding a plastic evidence bag up and looking at the small piece of paper inside it. The others crowded around him. Except for Bosch.

  The paper was gray like Moore’s skin. Bosch thought he could see one line of blue writing on the paper. Irving looked over at him as if seeing him for the first time.

  “Bosch, you will have to go.”

  Harry wanted to ask what the note said but knew he would be rejected. He saw a satisfied smirk on Chastain’s face.

  At the yellow tape he stopped to light another cigarette. He heard the clicking of high heels and turned to see one of the reporters, a blonde he recognized from Channel 2, coming at him with a wireless microphone in her hand and a model’s phoney smile on her face. She moved in on him in a well-practiced and quick maneuver. But before she could speak Harry said, “No comment. I’m not on the case.”

  “Can’t you just—”

  “No comment.”

  The smile dropped off her face as quick as a guillotine’s blade. She turned away angrily. But within a moment her heels were clicking sharply again as she moved with her cameraman into position for the A-shot, the one her report would lead with. The body was coming out. The strobes flared and the six cameramen formed a gauntlet. The two medical examiner’s men, pushing the covered body on a gurney, passed through it on the way to the waiting blue van. Harry noticed that a grim-faced Irving, walking stoically erect, trailed behind—but not far enough behind to be left out of the video frame. After all, any appearance on the nightly news was better than none, especially for a man with an eye on the chief’s office.

  After that, the crime scene began to break up. Everybody was leaving. The reporters, cops, everybody. Bosch ducked under the yellow tape and was looking around for Donovan or Sheehan when Irving came up on him.

  “Detective, on second thought, there is something I need you to do that will help expedite matters. Detective Sheehan has to finish securing the scene here. But I want to beat the media to Moore’s wife. Can you handle next-of-kin notification? Of course, nothing is definite but I want his wife to know what is happening.”

  Bosch had made such a show of indignation earlier, he couldn’t back away now. He wanted part of the case; he got it.

  “Give me the address,” he said.

  A few minutes later Irving was gone and the uniforms were pulling down the yellow tape. Bosch saw Donovan heading to his van, carrying the shotgun, which was wrapped in plastic, and several smaller evidence bags.

&nbs
p; Harry used the van’s bumper to tie his shoe while Donovan stowed the evidence bags in a wooden box that had once carried Napa Valley wine.

  “What do you want, Harry? I just found out you weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “That was before. This is now. I just got put on the case. I got next-of-kin duty.”

  “Some case to be put on.”

  “Yeah, well, you take what they give. What did he say?”

  “Who?”

  “Moore.”

  “Look, Harry, this is—”

  “Look, Donnie, Irving gave me next of kin. I think that cuts me in. I just want to know what he said. I knew this guy, okay? It won’t go anywhere else.”

  Donovan exhaled heavily, reached into the box and began sorting through the evidence bags.

  “Really didn’t say much at all. Nothing that profound.”