The Black Ice (1993) Read online

  After a while Porter said he understood. Bosch hung up then and looked at the others at the table. The squad room always seemed loud until he had to make phone calls he didn’t want anyone to hear. He got out a cigarette.

  “Ninety-eight dumped Porter’s whole caseload on you?” Edgar asked.

  “That’s right. That’s me, the bureau garbage man.”

  “Yeah, then what’s that make us, chopped liver?”

  Bosch smiled. He could tell Edgar didn’t know whether to be happy he avoided the assignment or mad because he was passed over.

  “Well, Jed, if you want, I’ll hustle back into the box and tell Ninety-eight that you’re volunteering to split this up with me. I’m sure the pencil-pushing prick will—”

  He stopped because Edgar had kicked him under the table. He turned in his seat and saw Pounds coming up from behind. His face was red. He had probably heard the last exchange.

  “Bosch, you’re not going to smoke that disgusting thing in here, are you?”

  “No, Lieutenant, I was just on my way out back.”

  He pushed his chair back and walked out to the back parking lot to smoke. The backdoor of the drunk tank was unlocked and open. The Christmas-night drunks had already been loaded into the jail bus and hauled to arraignment court to make their pleas. A trustee in gray overalls was spraying the floor of the tank with a hose. Harry knew the concrete floor of the tank had been graded on a slight incline as an aid in this daily cleansing. He watched the dirty water slosh out the door and into the parking lot where it flowed to a sewer drain. There was vomit and blood in the water and the smell from the tank was terrible. But Harry stood his ground. This was his place.

  When he was done he threw his cigarette butt into the water and watched the flow take it to the drain.

  6

  It felt like the detective bureau had become a fishbowl and he was the only one in the water. He had to get away from the curious eyes that were watching him. Bosch picked up the stack of blue binders and walked out the backdoor into the parking lot. Then he quickly walked back into the station through the watch office door, went down a short hallway past the lockup and up a staircase to the second-floor storage room. It was called the Bridal Suite because of the cots in the back corner. An unofficial official cooping station. There was an old cafeteria table up there and a phone. And it was quiet. It was all he needed.

  The room was empty today. Bosch put the stack of binders down and cleared a dented bumper marked with an evidence tag off the table. He leaned it against a stack of file boxes next to a broken surfboard that had also been tagged as evidence. Then he got down to work.

  Harry stared at the foot-high stack of binders. Pounds said the division had sixty-six homicides so far in the year. Figuring the rotation and including Harry’s two-month absence while recovering from the bullet wound, Porter had probably caught fourteen of the cases. With eight still open, that meant he had cleared six others. It wasn’t a bad record, considering the transient nature of homicide in Hollywood. Nationwide, the vast majority of murder victims know their killer. They are the people they eat with, drink with, sleep with, live with. But Hollywood was different. There were no norms. There were only deviations, aberrations. Strangers killed strangers here. Reasons were not a requirement. The victims turned up in alleys, on freeway shoulders, along the brushy hillsides in Griffith Park, in bags dropped like garbage into restaurant Dumpsters. One of Harry’s open files was the discovery of a body in parts—one on each of the fire escape landings of a six-story hotel on Gower. That one didn’t raise too many eyebrows in the bureau. The joke going around was that it was a lucky thing that the victim hadn’t stayed at the Holiday Inn. It was fifteen stories.

  The bottom line was that in Hollywood a monster could move smoothly in the flow of humanity. Just one more car on the crowded freeway. And some would always be caught and some would always be untraceable, unless you counted the blood they left behind.

  Porter had gone six and eight before punching out. It was a record that wouldn’t get him any commendations but, still, it meant six more monsters were out of the flow. Bosch realized he could balance Porter’s books if he could clear one of the eight open cases. The broken-down cop would at least go out with an even record.

  Bosch didn’t care about Pounds and his desire to clear one more case by midnight on New Year’s Eve. He felt no allegiance to Pounds and believed the annual tabulating, charting and analysing of lives sacrificed added up to nothing. He decided that if he was to do this job, he would do it for Porter. Fuck Pounds.

  He pushed the binders to the back of the table so he would have room to work. He decided to quickly scan each murder book and separate them into two piles. One stack of possible quick turns, another for the cases he did not think he could do anything with in a short time.

  He reviewed them in chronological order, starting with a Valentine’s Day strangulation of a priest in a stall at a bathhouse on Santa Monica. By the time he was done two hours had passed and Harry had only two of the blue binders in his stack of possibilities. One was a month old. A woman was pulled from a bus stop bench on Las Palmas into the darkened entranceway of a closed Hollywood memorabilia store and raped and stabbed. The other was the eight-day-old discovery of the body of a man behind a twenty-four-hour diner on Sunset near the Directors Guild building. The victim had been beaten to death.

  Bosch focused on these two because they were the most recent cases and experience had instilled in him a firm belief that cases become exponentially more difficult to clear with each day that passes. Whoever strangled the priest was as good as gold. Harry knew the percentages showed that the killer had gotten away.

  Bosch also saw that the two most recent cases could quickly be cleared if he caught a break. If he could identify the man found behind the restaurant, then that information could lead to his family, friends and associates and most likely to a motive and maybe a killer. Or, if he could trace the stabbing victim’s movement back to where she was before going to the bus stop, he might be able to learn where and how the killer saw her.

  It was a toss-up and Bosch decided to read each case file thoroughly before deciding. But going with the percentages he decided to read the freshest case first. The body found behind the restaurant was the warmest trail.

  On first glance, the murder book was notable for what it did not contain. Porter had not picked up a finished, typed copy of the autopsy protocol. So Bosch had to rely on the Investigator’s Summary reports and Porter’s own autopsy notes, which simply said the victim had been beaten to death with a “blunt object”—policespeak, meaning just about anything.

  The victim, estimated to be about fifty-five years old, was referred to as Juan Doe #67. This because he was believed to be Latin and was the sixty-seventh unidentified Latin man found dead in Los Angeles County during the year. There was no money on the body, no wallet and no belongings other than the clothing—all of it manufactured in Mexico. The only identification key was a tattoo on the upper left chest. It was a monocolor outline of what appeared to be a ghost. There was a Polaroid snapshot of it in the file. Bosch studied this for several moments, deciding the blue line drawing of a Casper-like ghost was very old. The ink was faded and blurred. Juan Doe #67 had gotten the tattoo as a young man.

  The crime scene report Porter had filled out said the body had been found at 1:44 A.M. on December18 by an off-duty police officer, identified only by his badge number, going in for an early breakfast or late dinner when he saw the body lying next to the Dumpster near the kitchen door of the Egg and I Diner.

  R/O #1101 had recently reported code seven and parked behind the location with the intention of entering to eat. Victim was viewed on the eastern side of the dumpster. Body was laying in a supine position, head to the north and feet to the south. Extensive injuries were readily noticeable and R/O notified the watch commander that a homicide callout was necessary. R/O saw no other individuals in the vicinity of the dumpster before or after the bo
dy was located.

  Bosch looked through the binder for a summary filed by the reporting officer but there was none. He next reviewed the other photos in the binder. These were of the body in place, before the techs had moved it to the morgue.

  Bosch could see the victim’s scalp had been rent open by one vicious blow. There were also wounds on the face and dried black blood on the neck and all over the once-white T-shirt the man was wearing. The dead man’s hands lay open at his sides. In close-ups of the hands, Bosch saw two fingers on the right hand bent backward in compound fractures—classic defense wounds. Aside from the wounds, Bosch noted the rough and scarred hands and the ropey muscles that went up the arms. He had been a worker of some kind. What had he been doing in the alley behind the diner at one o’clock in the morning?

  Next in the binder were witness statements taken from employees at the Egg and I. They were all men, which seemed wrong to Bosch because he had eaten at the Egg and I on several early mornings and remembered that there were always waitresses working the tables. Porter had apparently decided they were unimportant and concentrated only on the kitchen help. Each of the men interviewed said he did not recall seeing the victim in life or death.

  Porter had scribbled a star on the top of one of the statements. It was from a fry cook who had reported to work at 1 A.M. and had walked right past the east side of the Dumpster and through the kitchen door. He had seen no body on the ground and was sure he would have seen one if there had been one to see when he made his entrance.

  That had helped Porter set the timing of the slaying to sometime during the forty-four-minute window between the arrivals of the fry cook and the police officer who found the body.

  Next in the file were printouts from LAPD, National Crime Index, California Department of Justice, and Immigration and Naturalization Service computer runs on the victim’s fingerprints. All four were negative. No matches. Juan Doe #67 remained unidentified.

  At the back of the binder were notes Porter had taken during the autopsy, which had not been conducted until Tuesday, Christmas Eve, because of the usual backlog of cases at the coroner’s office. Bosch realized that it might have been Porter’s last official duty to watch one more body be cut up. He didn’t come back to work after the holiday.

  Perhaps Porter knew he would not return, for his notes were sparse, just a single page with a few thoughts jotted down. Some of them Bosch could not read. Other notes he could understand but they were meaningless. But near the bottom of the page Porter had circled a notation that said, “TOD—12 to 6 P.M.”

  Bosch knew the notation meant that, based on the rate of decrease in liver temperature and other appearances of the body, the time of death was likely to have been between noon and 6 P.M., but no later than 6 P.M.

  This did not make sense, Bosch thought at first. That put the time of death at least seven and a half hours before the discovery of the body. It also did not jibe with the fry cook not seeing any body by the Dumpster at 1 A.M.

  These contradictions were the reason Porter had circled the notation. It meant Juan Doe #67 had not been killed behind the diner. It meant he was killed somewhere else, nearly half a day earlier, and then dumped behind the diner.

  He took a notebook out of his pocket and began to make a list of people he wanted to talk to. First on the list was the doctor who had performed the autopsy; Harry needed to get the completed autopsy protocol. Then he noted Porter down for a more detailed interview. After that he wrote the fry cook’s name on the list because Porter’s notes only said the cook did not see a body on the ground while going to work. There was nothing about whether the cook saw anybody else or anything unusual in the alley. He also made a note to check with the waitresses who had been on duty that morning.

  To complete his list, Bosch had to pick up the phone and call the watch commander’s office.

  “I want to talk to eleven-oh-one,” Bosch said. “Can you look it up on the board there and tell me who that is?”

  It was Kleinman again. He said, “Very funny, smart guy.”

  “What?” Bosch said, but at that moment it struck him. “Is it Cal Moore?”

  “Was Cal Moore. Was.”

  Harry hung up the phone as several thoughts crowded into his brain at once. Juan Doe #67 had been found on the day before Moore checked into the Hideaway. He tried to piece out what this could mean. Moore stumbles onto a body in an alley early one morning. The next day he checks into a motel, turns up the air-conditioner and puts two barrels of double-ought buckshot into his face. The message he leaves behind is as simple as it is mysterious.

  I found out who I was

  Bosch lit a cigarette and crossed #1101 off his list, but he continued to center his thoughts on this latest piece of information. He felt impatient, bothered. He fidgeted in the chair, then stood up and began to walk in a circle around the table. He worked Porter into the framework this development provided and ran through it several times. Each time it was the same: Porter gets the call out on the Juan Doe #67 case. He obviously would have had to talk to Moore at the scene. The next day Moore disappears. The next week Moore is found dead, and then the next day Porter announces he is getting a doctor and is pulling the pin. Too many coincidences.

  He picked up the phone and called the homicide table. Edgar answered and Harry asked him to reach across the table and check his Rolodex for Porter’s home number. Edgar gave it to him and said, “Harry, where you at?”

  “Why, Ninety-eight looking for me?”

  “Nah. One of the guys from Moore’s unit called a few minutes ago. Said he was looking for you.”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Hey, Harry, I’m only passing on the message, not doing your job for you.”

  “Okay, okay. Which one called?”

  “Rickard. He just asked me to tell you they had something for you. I gave him your pager number ’cause I didn’t know if you were coming back anytime soon. So, where you at?”

  “Nowhere.”

  He hung up and dialed Porter’s house. The phone rang ten times. Harry hung up and lit another cigarette. He didn’t know what to think about all of this. Could Moore have simply stumbled onto the body as it said in the report? Could he have dumped it there? Bosch had no clues.

  “Nowhere,” he said aloud to the room full of storage boxes.

  He picked up the phone again and dialed the medical examiner’s office. He gave his name and asked to be connected to Dr. Corazón, the acting chief. Harry refused to say what the call was about to the operator. The phone was dead for nearly a minute before Corazón picked up.

  “I’m in the middle of something here,” she said.

  “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s the Moore cut?”

  “Yes, but I can’t talk about it. What do you need, Harry?”

  “I just inherited a case and there’s no autopsy in the file. I’m trying to find out who did it so I can get a copy.”

  “Harry, you don’t need to ask for the acting chief to track that. You could ask any of the investigators I have sitting around here on their asses.”

  “Yeah, but they aren’t as sweet to me as you.”

  “Okay, hurry up, what’s the name?”

  “Juan Doe #67. Date of death was the eighteenth. The cut was the twenty-fourth.”

  She said nothing and Bosch assumed she was checking a scheduling chart.

  “Yeah,” she said after a half minute. “The twenty-fourth. That was Salazar and he’s gone now. Vacation. That was his last autopsy until next month. He went to Australia. It’s summer there.”

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t fret, Harry. I have the package right here. Sally expected Lou Porter would be by to pick it up today. But Lou never came. How’d you inherit it?”

  “Lou pulled the pin.”

  “Jeez, that was kind of quick. What’s his—hold on—”

  She didn’t wait for him to say he would. This time she was gone more than
a minute. When she came back, her voice had a higher pitch to it.

  “Harry, I really’ve got to go. Tell you what, wanna meet me after work? By then I’ll’ve had some time to reach through this and I’ll tell you what we’ve got. I just remembered that there is something kind of interesting here. Salazar came to me for a referral approval.”

  “Referral to what?”

  “An entomologist—a bug doctor—over at UCLA. Sally found bugs.”

  Bosch already knew that maggots would not have bred in a body dead twelve hours at the most. And Salazar would not have needed an entomologist to identify them anyway.

  “Bugs,” he said.

  “Yeah. In the stomach content analysis and nasal swabs. But I don’t have time at the moment to discuss this. I’ve got four impatient men in the autopsy suite waiting for me. And only one of ’em is dead.”