The Burning Room Page 2

  Soto might not have been hesitant when pulling her gun while outnumbered in a barrio alley, but watching a live autopsy was something different. She had seemed reluctant that morning when Bosch told her they had caught a live one and had to go to the coroner’s office for an autopsy. Soto’s first question was whether it was required that both partners in an investigative team attend the dissection of the body. With most cold cases, the body was long in the ground and the only dissection involved was the analysis of old records and evidence. Open-Unsolved allowed Soto to work the most important cases—murders—without having to view a live autopsy or, for that matter, a homicide scene.

  Or so it seemed until that morning, when Bosch got the call at home from Crowder.

  The captain asked Bosch if he had read the Los Angeles Times that morning and Bosch said he didn’t get the paper. This was in keeping with the long-standing tradition of disdain that existed between the two institutions of law enforcement and the media.

  The captain then proceeded to tell him about a story on the front page that morning that was the origin of a new assignment for Bosch and Soto. As Bosch listened, he opened his laptop and went to the newspaper’s website, where the story was similarly receiving a lot of play.

  The newspaper was reporting that Orlando Merced had died. Ten years earlier, Merced became famous in Los Angeles as a victim—the unintended target of a shooting at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights. The bullet that struck Merced in the abdomen had traveled across the plaza from the vicinity of Boyle Avenue and was thought to have been a stray shot from a gang confrontation.

  The shooting occurred at 4 p.m. on a Saturday. Merced was thirty-one years old at the time and a member of a mariachi band for which he played the vihuela, the five-string guitarlike instrument that is the mainstay of the traditional Mexican folk sound. He and his three bandmates were among several mariachis waiting in the plaza for jobs—a restaurant gig or a quinceañera party or maybe a last-minute wedding. Merced was a large man, thick in the middle, and the bullet that seemingly came from nowhere splintered the mahogany facing of his instrument and then tore through his gut before lodging in his anterior spine.

  Merced would have become just another victim in a city where the media hits and runs—a thirty-second story on the English news channels, a four-paragraph report in the Times, a little more longevity in the Spanish media.

  But a simple twist of fate changed that. Merced and his band, Los Reyes Jalisco, had performed three months earlier at the wedding of city councilman Armando Zeyas, and Zeyas was now ramping up a campaign for the mayor’s office.

  Merced lived. The bullet damaged his spine and rendered him both a paraplegic and a cause. As the mayoral campaign took shape, Zeyas rolled him out in his wheelchair at all of his political rallies and speeches. He used Merced as a symbol of the neglect suffered by the communities of East Los Angeles. Crime was high, and police attention low—they had yet to catch Merced’s shooter. Gang violence was unchecked, basic city services and long-planned projects like the extension of the Metro Gold Line were long delayed. Zeyas promised to be the mayor who would change that, and he used Merced and East L.A. to forge a base and strategy that separated him from a crowded pack of contenders. He made it to the runoff and then easily took the election. All the way, Merced was by his side, sitting in the wheelchair, clad in his charro suit and sometimes even wearing the bloodstained blouse he wore on the day of the shooting.

  Zeyas served two terms. East L.A. got new attention from the city and the police. Crime went down. The Gold Line went through—even including an underground stop at Mariachi Plaza—and the mayor basked in the glow of his successes. But the person who shot Orlando Merced was never caught, and over time the bullet took a steady toll on his body. Infections led to numerous hospitalizations and surgeries. First he lost one leg, then the other. Adding insult to injury, the arm that once strummed the instrument that produced the rhythms of Mexican folk music was taken.

  And, finally, Orlando Merced had died.

  “The ball’s in our court now,” Crowder had said to Bosch. “I don’t care what the goddamn newspaper says, we have to decide if this is a homicide. If his death can be attributed medically to that shooting ten years ago, then we make a case and you and Lucky Lucy go back into it.”

  “Got it.”

  “The autopsy’s gotta say homicide or this whole thing dies with Merced.”

  “Got it.”

  Bosch never turned down a case, because he knew he was running out of cases. But he had to wonder why Crowder was giving the Merced investigation to him and Soto. He knew from the start that it was suspected that the bullet that had struck Merced had come from a gang gun. This meant the new investigation would almost wholly center on White Fence and the other prominent East L.A. gangs that traversed Boyle Heights. It was essentially going to be a Spanish-language case, and while Soto was obviously fluent, Bosch had limited skills in the language. He could order off a taco truck and tell a suspect to drop to his knees and put his hands behind his head. But conducting careful interviews and even interrogations in Spanish was not in his skill set. That would fall to Soto, and she, in his estimation, didn’t have the chops for it yet. There were at least two other teams in the unit that had Spanish speakers with more investigative experience. Crowder should have gone with one of them.

  The fact that Crowder had not gone with the obvious and correct choice made Bosch suspicious. On one hand, the directive to put the Bosch-Soto team on the case could have come from the OCP. It would be a media-sensitive investigation, and having Soto, the hero cop, on the case might help mold a positive media response. A darker alternative was that perhaps Crowder wanted the Bosch-Soto team to fail and very publicly undercut the police chief’s edict to break with tradition and experience when he formed the new Open-Unsolved Unit. The chief’s jumping of several young and inexperienced officers over veteran detectives waiting for slots in RHD squads did not go over well with the rank and file. Maybe Crowder was out to embarrass the chief for doing it.

  Bosch tried to push speculation about motives aside as they rounded the corner and entered the visitor parking lot. He thought about the plan for the day and realized that they were probably less than a mile from Hollenbeck Station and even closer to Mariachi Plaza. They could take Mission down to 1st and then go under the 101. Ten minutes tops. He decided to reverse the order of stops that he had told Soto they would make.

  They were halfway through the lot to the car when Bosch heard Soto’s name called from behind them. He turned to see a woman crossing the employee lot, holding a wireless microphone. Behind her a cameraman struggled to keep his camera up while he negotiated his way between cars.

  “Shit,” Bosch said.

  Bosch looked around to see if there were others. Someone—maybe Corazon—had tipped the media.

  Bosch recognized the woman but he could not remember from which news show or press conference. But he didn’t know her and she didn’t know him. She went right to Soto with the microphone. Soto was the better-known quantity when it came to the media. At least in recent history.

  “Detective Soto, Katie Ashton, Channel Five, do you remember me?”

  “Uh, I think . . .”

  “Has Orlando Merced’s death officially been ruled a homicide?”

  “Not yet,” Bosch said quickly, even though he was not on camera.

  Both the camera and the reporter turned to him. This was not what he wanted, to be on the news. But he did want to get a few steps ahead of the media on the case.

  “The Coroner’s Office is evaluating Mr. Merced’s medical records and will make a decision on that. We hope to know something very soon.”

  “Will this restart the investigation of Mr. Merced’s shooting?”

  “The case is still open and that’s all we have to say at this time.”

  Without further word Ashton turned 90 degrees to her right and brought the microphone under Soto’s chin.

  “Detective Soto
, you were awarded the LAPD’s Medal of Valor for the Pico-Union shoot-out. Are you now gunning for whoever shot Orlando Merced?”

  Soto seemed momentarily nonplussed, then replied.

  “I am not gunning for anyone.”

  Bosch pushed past the videographer, who had swung around to film over Ashton’s left shoulder. He got to Soto and turned her toward their car.

  “That’s it,” he said. “No further comment. Call media relations if you want anything else.”

  They left the reporter and videographer there and walked quickly to the car. Bosch got into the driver’s seat.

  “Good answer,” he said as he turned the ignition.

  “What do you mean?” Soto responded.

  “Your answer to her about gunning for the Merced shooter.”

  “Oh.”

  They drove out onto Mission and headed south. When they were a few blocks clear of the coroner’s office, Bosch pulled to the curb and stopped. He held out his hand to Soto.

  “Let me see your phone for a second,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Soto asked.

  “Let me see your phone. You said you had to make a call when I went into the autopsy. I want to see if you called that reporter. I can’t have a partner who’s feeding the media.”

  “No, Harry, I didn’t call her.”

  “Good, then let me see your phone.”

  Soto indignantly handed him her cell phone. It was an iPhone, same as Harry had. He opened up the call record. Soto had not made a call since the previous evening. And the last call she had received had been from Bosch that morning, telling her about the case they had just caught.

  “Did you text her?”

  He opened the text app and saw the most recent text was to someone named Adriana. It was in Spanish. He held the phone up to his partner.

  “Who’s this? What’s it say?”

  “It’s to my friend. Look, I didn’t want to go into that room, okay?”

  Bosch looked at her.

  “What room? What are you—”

  “The autopsy. I didn’t want to have to watch that.”

  “So you lied to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Harry. It’s embarrassing. I don’t think I can take that.”

  Bosch handed the phone back.

  “Just don’t lie to me, Lucia.”

  He checked the side mirror and pulled away from the curb. They were silent until they got down to 1st Street and Bosch moved into the left-turn lane. Soto realized they were not heading to the Regional Crime Lab with the bullet.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re in the neighborhood. I thought we’d check out Mariachi Plaza for a few minutes, then go to Hollenbeck for the murder book.”

  “I see. What about firearms?”

  “We’ll do it after. Is this related to the shoot-out—your not wanting to go to the autopsy?”

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. I just didn’t want to see that, that’s all.”

  Bosch let it go for the time being. Two minutes later they were approaching Mariachi Plaza and Bosch saw two TV trucks parked at the curb with their transmitters cranked up for live reports.

  “They’re really jumping all over this,” he said. “We’ll come back.”

  He drove on by. A half mile later they came to the Hollenbeck Station. Brand-new and modern, with angled glass panels creating a facade that reflected the sun in multiple angles, it looked more like some sort of corporate office than a police station. Bosch pulled into the visitor lot and killed the engine.

  “This is going to be pleasant,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Soto asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  3

  Bosch never liked being on either end of a takeaway case. When he worked Hollywood Homicide, the big cases were often grabbed by the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. Then when he worked RHD himself, he was on the other end of it, often taking cases away from the smaller regional squads. In Open-Unsolved that rarely happened because the cases were old and dusty. But the Merced case, though ten years old, was not housed in the Department’s archives. It still belonged to the original two investigators who caught it on the day of the shooting. Until now.

  Bosch and Soto entered the station through the work door, as the entrance off the black-and-white lot was called. They followed a rear hallway into the detective bureau and Bosch knocked on the open door of the lieutenant’s office.

  “Lieutenant Garcia?”

  “That’s me.”

  Bosch stepped into the tiny office and Soto followed.

  “I’m Bosch and this is Soto. We’re from Open-Unsolved, here to pick up the stuff on Merced. We’re looking for Rodriguez and Rojas.”

  Garcia nodded. He looked like a classic LAPD administrator. White shirt, bland tie, jacket hooked over the back of his seat. He had on cuff links that were tiny little police badges. No cop would wear cuff links out on the street. Too gaudy, too easy to lose in a scuffle.

  “Yes, we were alerted by command. They’re ready for you. CAPs is back around the corner past the milking room.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  Bosch turned to go and almost banged into Soto, who didn’t realize they were finished with the lieutenant. She awkwardly stepped back and turned to leave.

  “Uh, Detectives?” Garcia said.

  Bosch turned back to him.

  “Do me one favor. If you clear it, don’t forget about my guys.”

  He was talking about the credit that would go along with solving a high-profile case. The trouble with a takeaway was that often the divisional detectives did a lot of the groundwork and then the big shots from downtown came in and scooped the case and with it all the glory that followed an arrest. Having been on both sides of takeaway cases, Bosch understood what Garcia was asking.

  “We won’t,” he said. “In fact, if you can spare them, we’ll use them when the time is right.”

  Bosch was talking about making an arrest. If they reached the point that they had a suspect and Bosch was putting together a warrant or an arrest team he would circle back for Rodriguez and Rojas.

  “Good deal,” Garcia said.

  They left the office and found the CAPs table in an alcove past the station’s lactation room. The city had recently mandated that all public facilities have a “family” room where employees or citizen visitors could have privacy while breast-feeding their babies. None of the nineteen police stations in the city were designed to include a lactation room, so the edict went out that one of the interview rooms in each detective bureau be transformed into a space that met city requirements. The rooms were repainted in soothing pastel tones, and cartoon stickers were added as well. Sometimes in overcrowded situations, the rooms were used during investigations, the unwitting suspects being interrogated in front of the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants and Kermit the Frog.

  The Hollenbeck CAPs squad consisted of five desks pushed together in such a way that two pairs of detectives faced each other, and the squad leader’s desk was located at one end of the desks. There were only two men sitting at this configuration under the “Crimes Against Persons” sign, and Bosch assumed they were Oscar Rodriguez and Benito Rojas.

  There was a stack of three blue binders on the desk in front of one of the men. Bosch could read the name MERCED on the spine of two of them. The third just said TIPS. Also on the desk was a cardboard box sealed with red evidence tape. Leaning next to the desk was a black carrying case for what Bosch assumed was Orlando Merced’s instrument. There were bumper stickers festooning the case, announcing its travel to many towns and regions through the Southwest and Mexico.

  “Hey, guys,” Bosch said. “We’re from Open-Unsolved.”

  “Of course you are,” said one of the men. “The big shots have arrived.”

  Bosch nodded. He had been the same way in the past when a case was taken away from him. He held his hand out to the angry detective.

  “Harry Bosch. And this is Lucia Soto
. Are you Oscar or Benito?”

  The man reluctantly shook Bosch’s hand.

  “Ben.”

  “Good to meet you. And I’m sorry about this. We both are. Nobody really likes this from either side. A takeaway. I know you’ve done a lot of work, and it’s not really fair. But it is what it is. We all do what the geniuses in command tell us to do.”

  The speech seemed to placate Rojas. Rodriguez looked impassive.

  “Just take the stuff,” Rodriguez said. “Good luck, guy.”

  “Actually, I don’t just want to take the stuff,” Bosch said. “We’d like your help. I’d like to ask you about the case. Now, and later as we get into it. You two are the brain trust. Since day one. I’d be shooting myself in the foot if I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “Did they get the bullet out?” Rodriguez asked.

  “They did,” Bosch said. “We just came from the autopsy.”

  Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out the bullet. He handed the bag to Rodriguez and then watched his reaction. He turned and handed it to his partner.

  “Holy shit,” Rojas said. “This looks like a .308.”

  Bosch nodded as he took the bag back.

  “Think so. Our next stop is the bullet lab at Regional. You guys never had it as a rifle, did you?”

  “Why would we?” Rodriguez said. “We never had the goddamn bullet.”

  “Did you look at X-rays from the hospital?” Soto asked.

  The two Hollenbeck detectives looked at her like she was out of line questioning their work. Bosch could ask because he had the experience. But not her.

  “Yeah, we looked at X-rays,” Rodriguez said, an annoyed tone in his voice. “The angle was bad. All we got was the mushroom. Couldn’t tell dick from that.”

  Soto nodded. Bosch tried to get the focus off of her.

  “Hey, if you guys aren’t too busy right now, we’d like to buy you a cup of coffee and talk about what’s in those books.”

  Bosch could tell by the reaction on Rodriguez’s face that he had made a misstep.

  “Ten years on a case and we get a cup of coffee,” he said. “Fuck you very much but I don’t need any coffee.”