Desert Star Read online

  Two hours into his review, he moved on to volume 2, the second murder book, and found the binder to be stocked by update summaries at thirty days, ninety days, six months, and then annually for five years before the case was officially classified as cold and inactive. No suspect or even person of interest ever emerged, and no determination of whether Sarah knew her killer was ever made.

  The back of the volume 2 binder was where ancillary records of inquiries by the victim’s family and others were kept over the years. These showed that Sarah Pearlman’s parents made numerous calls asking for updates until these stopped seven years earlier. The inquiries were then taken up by Councilman Jake Pearlman or came from his chief of staff, Nelson Hastings. Bosch took this transition to mean that Sarah Pearlman’s parents had died without ever seeing justice for their daughter.

  Bosch finished his review by going back to the photos in volume 3 and slowly paging through the plastic sleeves, once more looking for anything in Sarah’s bedroom that would possibly stand out as a missed lead or piece of evidence.

  He finally came to the forensic shots and the final sleeve, which contained a photo of the print card on which a latent tech had taped the partial palm print. He was staring at it when he felt a peripheral presence and looked up to see that Tom Laffont had stepped over from his workstation.

  “All good?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah, good,” Bosch said. “Just reviewing this.”

  Bosch felt awkward with Laffont studying him.

  “She’s got you on the big one, huh?” Laffont said.

  “What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

  “The councilman’s sister. I get the feeling if we don’t solve it, we won’t be around for very long.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, Ballard sure spends a lot of time on the phone with him. You know, giving him the blow-by-blow of what we’re doing here. The conversations always seem to come back to the little sister. So she’s under pressure, no doubt.”

  Bosch just nodded.

  “You find anything we need to do?” Laffont pressed. “Would love to close that one.”

  “Not yet,” Bosch said. “Still looking.”

  “Well, good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  “What did you do with the Bureau? Were you in the L.A. field office?”

  “Started in San Diego, did stints in Sacramento and Oakland before finishing down here. Was on the Major Crimes squad. I punched out at twenty. Got kind of sick of chasing bank robbers.”

  “I think I get that.”

  “Lilia and I are done for the day. Welcome, and I’ll see you next time.”

  “Next time.”

  Bosch watched Laffont and Aghzafi gather their things and head out. He waited a beat, then got up to look for a copy machine.

  On his way to the archive room exit, Bosch stopped and looked down one of the aisles. Shelves on each side were lined with murder books. Some new blue and some faded, a few of the cases contained in white binders. He stepped into the aisle and walked slowly past the books, running the fingers of his left hand along the plastic bindings as he passed. Each one the story of a murder left unsolved. This was hallowed ground to Bosch. The library of lost souls. Too many for him and Ballard and the others to ever solve. Too many to ever soothe the pain.

  When he reached the end of the aisle, he made the turn and walked down the next row. The shelves were similarly stacked with cases. A skylight window above brought the afternoon sun down, throwing natural light on unnatural death. Bosch paused for a moment and stood still. There was only silence in the library of lost souls.

  4

  Ballard picked Pinto up at the daycare on Hillhurst and walked him on a leash back to her apartment. He was a ten-pound Chihuahua mix but he managed to pull hard against the leash, his body clock telling him dinner was at the end of the walk.

  As she got to the steps leading to the front door of her building, Ballard got a call and saw Bosch’s name on the caller ID.

  “Harry?”

  She could hear music in the background. Jazz. She assumed he was home.

  “Hey. Where are you at?” he asked.

  “About to walk in the door at my place,” Ballard said. “What is that? Sounds nice.”

  “Clifford Brown with Strings.”

  “So, did you finish your review?”

  “Did. Went through it a couple times.”

  “And?”

  “And the original team did a good job. Actually, a really good job. I saw no flaws.”

  Ballard had not really expected Bosch to break the case or even find a flaw in the original investigation. She had reviewed the files herself and had found no strings to tug or stone left unturned.

  “Well, it was worth the shot,” she said. “I’ll set up a call with the councilman and let him know that we—”

  “I’m looking at the photo of the palm print,” Bosch said. “The partial.”

  “What do you mean you’re looking at it? I thought you were home.”

  “I am home.”

  “So you made copies when I told you not to. That’s a great first day, Harry. Already you—”

  “Do you want to hear what I’m thinking, or do you want to fire me for breaking the rules?”

  She was silent for a moment before letting his infraction go.

  “Fine. What are you thinking?”

  “This is just a photo. Is the actual print card still around, or was it digitized and destroyed?”

  “They don’t destroy print cards, because all digital matches are followed up with a visual confirmation using the actual print before it can go to court. It’s current protocol. Why do you want the original card?”

  “Because when they picked up the print with the tape, I don’t know, maybe they got—”

  “Some DNA.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit, Harry, that might actually work. I wonder if that’s been done before.”

  “One way to find out.”

  “I’ll talk to the lab first thing tomorrow.”

  “You should pull the print—make sure it’s still there after twenty-eight years—protocol or not.”

  “I will and then I’ll take it to the lab. This is good, Harry. I should have thought of it, but that’s why I have you. It gives me hope, and that will give Councilman Pearlman hope.”

  “I don’t think I would tell him about this until you find out if it’s got a shot, you know.”

  “You’re right. Let’s see where it goes first. It’s not really Pearlman I talk to over there, anyway. His chief of staff is constantly up my ass about results.”

  Bosch realized that Laffont had been wrong about who she spent time with on the phone. It was Hastings, not Pearlman.

  “Yeah, Hastings,” he said. “I saw his name in the murder book. Maybe this will shut him up.”

  “Harry, thank you,” Ballard said. “This is why I brought you on the team. And you already came through.”

  “Not yet. Let’s see what the lab says.”

  “Well, I think you can move on to the Gallagher case if you want now.”

  “Okay. I’ll start on it.”

  “Let me guess, you already copied the files you didn’t already have?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then I’ll see you tomorrow at Ahmanson?”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Ballard hung up, then punched in the combo on the gate and entered her building.

  After feeding the dog and changing into sweats, Ballard called in a pickup order of cacio e pepe pasta to Little Dom’s down the street. She had a half hour before pickup, so she opened her laptop on the kitchen table and went to work, trying to find a case where DNA had been extracted from fingerprints.

  A basic search turned up nothing and she grew frustrated. She grabbed her phone off the counter and called the cell phone of Darcy Troy, the DNA tech assigned to handle cases from the Open-Unsolved Unit.

  “Hey, girl.”

  “
Darcy, how’s it going?”

  “Can’t complain unless you’re going to hit me up with something.”

  “I just have a question for the moment.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Have you ever heard of DNA being pulled off a fingerprint or a palm print?”

  “I’ve heard it talked about at the forensic conferences, but are you talking about case law sanctioning it?”

  “No, more like whether you can get DNA from prints.”

  “Fingerprints are made from the oils on your fingers. It’s still bodily fluid.”

  “Palm prints, too?”

  “Sure. And if you get people with sweaty palms, then you probably stand a better chance.”

  “Sweaty like from being about to commit a crime like rape and murder?”

  “There you go.”

  “How would you like to be the first at the LAPD to try it?”

  “I could use the change of pace. Whaddaya got?”

  “I’m not sure I’ve got anything yet. But one of my guys is looking at a case from ’94—home invasion, rape, and murder—and they pulled half a palm print off the windowsill on the suspected entry point.”

  “How was it collected?”

  “Dusted with gray powder and taped to a white card.”

  “Shit, that doesn’t make it easy. The powder would have absorbed the oil, and the tape they used won’t help. But I could take a look.”

  “First thing tomorrow I’m going to latents to pull it.”

  “If it’s still there, you mean.”

  “Should be. It’s an open case. No RDO.”

  The department issued records disposal orders to the evidence units only when a case was solved and considered completed.

  “Well, if you find it, bring it to me. I won’t even count it as your jump-the-line pass for this month. Just because this is something new.”

  “That sounds like a deal I can’t refuse. I’m going to go now before you change your mind.”

  Both women laughed.

  “See you tomorrow, Darcy.”

  Ballard disconnected and checked the time. She had to go pick up her food. She grabbed the leash and hooked it to Pinto’s collar, then headed out. Little Dom’s was two blocks away. The restaurant people there knew her well from in-person and takeout orders on a weekly basis. It had been her go-to place since she moved into the neighborhood. Her food was ready and waiting and still hot. And there was even a dog biscuit for Pinto.

  5

  Bosch left his home before dawn because he wanted to get to his destination while the sun was still low in the sky. He got up to the 210 freeway and headed east in very light traffic until he reached the 15 and turned northeast, joining the cars headed toward Las Vegas. But short of the Nevada border he jogged directly north on Death Valley Road and into the Mojave Desert. The road cut across a barren land of brush and sand, the low-lying salt pan off in the distance, glowing white in the morning sun like snow.

  At the Old Spanish Trail to Tecopa he pulled off the road by an Inyo County Sheriff’s Department call box and cell tower powered by a sun panel. He put on a Dodgers cap and got out in the sun. It was 7 a.m. and already 79 degrees according to his phone. He walked past the call box and about thirty feet into the brush. He found the spot easily. The lone mesquite tree was still there, partially shading the four columns of rocks piled one on top of another to create a sculpture of sorts marking where the grave had been found. Three of the rock columns had crumbled over time, knocked down by desert winds or earthquakes.

  To Bosch it was another place of hallowed ground. It was where an entire family had ended. A father, mother, daughter, and son murdered and then buried in the rock and sand, never to be found had it not been for a Cal State geological expedition studying the nearby salt pan for evidence of climate change.

  Bosch noticed that a profusion of flowers had sprouted around the rocks and the trunk of the mesquite tree. Each flower had a yellow button center surrounded by white petals. They were low to the ground and probably pulling water as well as shade from the mesquite, which Bosch knew could send roots eighty feet down through the rock and sand and salt to find water. They were built to stand tall in the harshest of environments.

  Bosch didn’t plan to stay long. But he knew that this had to be the starting point to the work he was beginning. Before going once more into the abyss, he had to find his grounding in the case. The emotional core. And he knew without a doubt that he was standing at it. The media and everybody else called it the Gallagher case. Bosch never did. He could not diminish it that way. To him it was the Gallagher Family case. An entire family had been murdered. Taken from their home in the night. Found here by happenstance a year later.

  Squatting down amid the flowers, Bosch started to rebuild the rock columns, carefully stacking them again in solid balance. He was wearing old jeans and work boots. He was careful not to catch a finger beneath the heavier rocks as he restacked them. He knew that nature would eventually undo his work here but he felt the need to rebuild the rock garden as he began to rebuild the case.

  He was almost finished when he heard a vehicle on the road behind him and the crush of sand and stone as it pulled off the paved road and came to a stop. Bosch glanced over his shoulder and saw the markings on the white SUV: INYO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT.

  A lone man in uniform made his way across the scrub to get to Bosch.

  “Harry,” he said. “This is a surprise.”

  “Beto,” Bosch said. “I could say the same. You just happened to be passing by in the middle of nowhere?”

  “No, couple years ago we put a camera on the sun panel by the street. I get alerts. I saw a car pull over and then I saw it was you. Been a long time, brother.”

  “Long time is right.”

  Beto Orestes was the Inyo County investigator who first responded to the call about bodies being found in the desert eight years before. The grim discovery led to a unique partnership between Orestes and Bosch and their departments. The crimes committed against the Gallagher family were Los Angeles–based but the bodies were found in Inyo County. While the LAPD took the lead on the case, the crime scene investigation was headed by Orestes and run by his department. An ancillary investigation went into why this spot in the desert was chosen and whether it was completely random or possibly a decision that could help identify and link a suspect. It didn’t lead to a conclusion but it was thorough, and Orestes had impressed Bosch with his commitment to the case.

  As the weeks and then months went by, Inyo County’s involvement grew less and less. Orestes’ superiors viewed it as an L.A. case inconveniently located in their jurisdiction. Orestes was handed other investigations and responsibilities. Meantime, Bosch was also taken off full-time status on the investigation and given other unsolved cases to pursue until he retired. As the two departments pulled back, and the Open-Unsolved unit was disbanded, the Gallagher Family case fell through the cracks between them.

  “I called to check on you about a year ago and they told me you were retired,” Orestes said. “Now I find you in the rock garden we made all those years ago.”

  “I’m back on it, Beto,” Bosch said. “I thought I should start here.”

  “They take you back?”

  “On a voluntary basis.”

  “Well, anything I can do, you know how to get me.”

  “I do.”

  Bosch stood up and dusted off his pants. He was done here. Orestes reached down and picked one of the flowers.

  “Hard to believe something so beautiful can exist in this place,” he said. “And people say there is no God. You ask me, there’s God right there.”

  He turned the stem between his fingers, and the flower turned like a pinwheel.

  “You know what that is?” Bosch asked.

  “Sure,” Orestes said. “This one’s called the desert star.”

  Bosch nodded. He wasn’t convinced that it was God on earth, but he liked that.

  They started back tow
ard their vehicles.

  “What about McShane?” Orestes asked. “He poke his head up somewhere?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Bosch said. “But I haven’t started to look again. I will today.”

  “What’s ‘on a voluntary basis’ actually mean, Harry?”

  “The cold case unit is run by one sworn officer, and the rest are part-timers and volunteers.”

  “You know, you always struck me as the kind of guy who would do it even if they didn’t pay you.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess so.”

  They got to the road and Orestes studied Bosch’s old Cherokee.

  “That thing going to make it?” he asked. “I got five gallons of water if you want to top off the radiator.”

  “No, I’ll be fine,” Bosch said. “The engine’s solid but the AC not so much. That’s why I came out early.”

  “So, let me know how it goes, yeah?”

  “I will.”

  Orestes started toward his SUV and threw a line over his shoulder.

  “I’d sure like to see this one cleared before I’m done,” he said.

  “Me, too,” Bosch said. “Me, too.”

  6

  Ballard entered the homicide archive, expecting to find Bosch at his workstation reviewing the Gallagher books. She was excited to update him on her trip to Piper Tech and then to the DNA lab that morning. But there was no Bosch.

  Paul Masser, Lou Rawls, and Colleen Hatteras were at their stations and she greeted them. Rawls was in a day before his assigned day. Ballard took this as a sign that he had caught a break on one of the cases he was working or he was just eager to meet the newest team member, Harry Bosch. She decided that it was likely the latter, as his case work moved at a glacial pace with breaks being elusive. In fact, he was the the first official member of the team but had yet to close a case—even a gimme, like a direct DNA case match.

  “I thought we were going to meet the new guy you mentioned in the email Sunday,” Masser said.

  “We are,” Ballard said. “Or at least we were. Not sure where he is, but he did say he’d be in. So why don’t we start with updates on cases and then we’ll see where we’re at with him.”