The Closers (2005) Read online

  Bosch and Rider had something none of the others had: badges. It helped them cut through the lines and get an immediate audience with the agent Roland Mackey had been assigned to after his arrest two years earlier for lewd and lascivious behavior. Thelma Kibble was recessed in a standard government-issue cubicle in a room crowded with many identical cubicles. Her desk and the one government-issue shelf that came with the cubicle were crowded with the files of the convicts she was charged with shepherding through probation or parole. She was of medium size and build. Her eyes were brightly set off against her dark brown skin. Bosch and Rider introduced themselves as detectives from RHD. There was only one chair in front of Kibble's desk so they remained standing.

  "Is it robbery or homicide we are talking about here?" Kibble asked.

  "Homicide," Rider said.

  "Then why doesn't one of you grab the extra chair from that cubicle over there. She's still at lunch."

  Bosch took the chair she pointed at and brought it back. Rider and Bosch sat down and told Kibble they wanted a look at the file belonging to Roland Mackey. Bosch could tell that Kibble recognized the name but not the case.

  "It was a lewd and lash probation you caught two years ago," he said. "He cleared after twelve months."

  "Oh, he's not current, then. Well, I need to go grab that one in archives. I don't remem-oh, yes I do, yes I do. Roland Mackey, yeah. I rather enjoyed that one."

  "How so?" Rider asked.

  Kibble smiled.

  "Let's just say he had some difficulty reporting to a woman of color. Tell you what, though, let me go grab the file so we get the details right."

  She double-checked the spelling of Mackey's name with them and left the cubicle.

  "That might help," Bosch said.

  "What?" Rider asked.

  "If he had a problem with her he'll probably have a problem with you. We might be able to use it."

  Rider nodded. Bosch saw she was looking at a newspaper article that was tacked to the fiberboard wall of the cubicle. It was yellowed with age. Bosch leaned closer to read it but he was too far away to read anything but the headline.

  WOUNDED PAROLE OFFICER GETS HERO'S WELCOME

  "What is it?" he asked Rider.

  "I know who this is," Rider said. "She got shot a few years ago. She went to some ex-con's house and somebody shot her. The convict called for help but then split. Something like that. We gave her an award at the BPO. God, she's lost a lot of weight."

  Something about the story rang a bell with Bosch, too. He noticed there were two photographs accompanying the story. One was of Thelma Kibble standing in front of the DOC building, a banner welcoming her back hanging from the roof. Rider was right. Kibble looked like she'd dropped eighty pounds since the photo. Bosch suddenly remembered seeing that banner across the front of the building a few years back while one of his cases was in trial at the courthouse across the street. He nodded. Now he remembered.

  Then something about the second photo caught his eye and memory. It was a mug shot of a white woman-the ex-convict who lived in the house where Kibble had been shot.

  "That's not the shooter, right?" he asked.

  "No, she's the one who called it in, who saved her. She disappeared."

  Bosch suddenly stood up and leaned across the desk, putting his hands on stacks of files for support. He looked at the mug shot photo. It was a black-and-white shot that had darkened as the newspaper clipping had aged. But Bosch recognized the face in the photo. He was sure of it. The hair and eyes were different. The name underneath the photo was different, too. But he was sure he had encountered the woman in Las Vegas in the past year.

  "Those are my files you're messing up."

  Bosch immediately pulled himself back across the desk as Kibble came around it.

  "Sorry about that. I was just trying to read the story."

  "That's old news. Time I took that thing down. A lot of years and a lot of pounds ago."

  "I was at the Black Peace Officers meeting when you were honored," Rider said.

  "Oh, really?" Kibble said, her face breaking into a smile. "That was a really nice night for me."

  "Whatever happened to the woman?" Bosch asked.

  "Cassie Black? Oh, she's in the wind. Nobody's seen her since."

  "She has charges?"

  "The funny thing is, no. I mean, we violated her because she ran, but that's all she's got on her. Hell, she didn't shoot me. All she did was save my life. I wasn't going to have 'em charge her for it. But the parole violation I couldn't do anything about. She split. Far as I know, the guy who shot me might've got her and buried her out in the desert somewhere. I hope not, though. She did me a good turn."

  Bosch was suddenly not so sure the woman he had temporarily lived next to in an airport motel while visiting his daughter in Las Vegas the year before had been Cassie Black. He sat down and didn't say anything.

  "So you found the file?" Rider said.

  "Right here," Kibble said. "You two can have at it. But if you want to ask me about the boy then do it now. My afternoon slate starts in five minutes. If I start late then I have a domino effect running through the whole damn day and I get outta here late. Can't do that tonight. I gotta date."

  She was beaming at the prospect of her date.

  "Okay, well, what do you remember about Mackey? Did you look at the file?"

  "Yeah, I looked when I was coming back with it. Mackey was just a pissant weenie wagger. Small-time drug user who got racial religion somewhere along the way. He was no big thing. I rather enjoyed having him under my thumb. But that was about it."

  Rider had opened the file and Bosch was leaning toward her to look into it.

  "The lewd and lash was an exposure case?" he asked.

  "Actually, I think you'll find in there that our boy got himself high on speed and alcohol-a lot of alcohol-and he decided to relieve himself in somebody's front yard. A thirteen-year-old girl happened to live there and she happened to be out front shooting baskets. Mr. Mackey decided upon seeing the girl that since he already had his little pud out and about in the wind that he might as well go ahead and ask the girl if she wanted to partake of it. Did I mention that the girl's father was LAPD Metro Division and happened to be off-duty and home at the time of this incident? He stepped outside and put Mr. Mackey on the ground. In fact, Mr. Mackey later complained that coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally he had been put on the ground right on top of the puddle he had just made. He was rather unhappy about that."

  Kibble smiled at the story. Bosch nodded. Her version was more colorful than the case summary in the file.

  "And he just pleaded out."

  "That's right. He got a probation deal and took it. He came to me."

  "Any problems during his twelve months?"

  "Nothing other than his problem with me. He asked for another agent and it got turned down and he got stuck with me. He kept it in check but it was there. Underneath, you know? Couldn't ever tell which bugged his ass more, me being black or me being a woman."

  She looked at Rider as she said this last part and Rider nodded.

  The file contained details of Mackey's past crimes and life. It had photos taken during earlier arrests. It would become the baseline resource on their target. There was too much in it to go through in front of Kibble.

  "Can we get this copied?" Bosch asked. "We'd also like to borrow one of these early photos if we could."

  Kibble's eyes narrowed for a moment.

  "You two working an old case, huh?"

  Rider nodded.

  "From way back," she said.

  "Like a cold case, huh?"

  "We call it open-unsolved," Rider said.

  Kibble nodded thoughtfully.

  "Well, nothing surprises me in this place-I've seen people shoplift a frozen pizza and get popped two days before the end of a four-year tail. But from what I remember of this guy Mackey, he didn't seem to me to have the killer instinct. Not if you ask me. He's a follower, not
a doer."

  "That's a good read," Bosch said. "We're not sure he is the one. We just know he was involved."

  He stood up, ready to go.

  "What about the photo?" he asked. "A photocopy won't be clear enough to show."

  "You can borrow that one as long as I get it back. I need to keep the file complete. People like Mackey have a tendency to come back to me, know what I mean?"

  "Yes, and we'll get it back to you. Also, can I get a copy of your story there? I want to read it."

  Kibble looked at the newspaper clip tacked to the cubicle's wall.

  "Just don't look at the picture. That's the old me."

  After clearing the DOC office Rider and Bosch crossed the street to the Van Nuys Civic Center and walked between the two courthouses to get to the plaza in the middle. They sat down on a bench by the library. Their next appointment was with Arturo Garcia in the LAPD's Van Nuys Division, which also was one of the buildings in the government center, but they were early and wanted to study the DOC file first.

  The file contained detailed accounts of all the crimes Roland Mackey had been arrested for since his eighteenth birthday. It also contained biographical summaries used by probation and parole agents over the years in determining aspects of his supervision. Rider handed Bosch the arrest reports while she started going through the biographical details. She then immediately proceeded to interrupt his reading of a burglary case by calling out details of Mackey's bio that she thought might be pertinent to the Verloren case.

  "He got a general education degree at Chatsworth High the summer of 'eighty-eight," she said. "So that puts him right in Chatsworth."

  "If he got a GED, then he dropped out first. Does it say from where?"

  "Nothing here. Says he grew up in Chatsworth. Dysfunctional family. Poor student. He lived with his father, a welder at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys. Doesn't sound like Hillside Prep material."

  "We still need to check. Parents always want their kid to do better. If he went there and knew her and then dropped out, it would explain why he was never interviewed back in 'eighty-eight."

  Rider just nodded. She was reading on.

  "This guy never left the Valley," she said. "Every address is in the Valley."

  "What's the last known?"

  "Panorama City. Same as the AutoTrack hit. But if it's in here, then it's probably old."

  Bosch nodded. Anybody who had been through the system as many times as Mackey would know to move house the day after clearing a probation tail. Don't leave an address with the man. Bosch and Rider would go to the Panorama City address to check it out but Bosch knew that Mackey would be gone. Wherever he had moved, he had not used his name on public utility applications and he had not updated his driver's license or vehicle registration. He was flying below radar.

  "Says he was in the Wayside Whities," Rider said as she reviewed a report.

  "No surprise."

  The Wayside Whities was the name of a jail gang that had existed for years in the Wayside Honor Rancho in the northern county. Gangs usually formed along racial lines in the county jails as a means of protection rather than out of racial enmity. It was not unusual to find members of the Nazi-leaning Wayside Whities to secretly be Jewish. Protection was protection. It was a way of belonging to a group and staving off assault from other groups. It was a measure of jail survival. Mackey's membership was only a tenuous connection to Bosch's theory that race possibly played a part in the Verloren case.

  "Anything else on that?" he asked.

  "Not that I see."

  "What about physical description? Any tattoos?"

  Rider rifled through the paperwork and pulled out a jail intake form.

  "Yeah, tattoos," she said, reading. "He's got his name on one bicep and I guess a girl's name on the other. RaHoWa."

  She spelled the name and Bosch started to get the first tingling sense that his theory was coming strongly into play.

  "It's not a name," he said. "It's code. Means 'racial holy war.' First two letters of each word. The guy's one of the believers. I think Garcia and Green missed this and it was right there."

  He could feel the adrenaline picking up.

  "Look at this," Rider said urgently. "He also has the number eighty-eight tattooed on his back. The guy's got a reminder of what he did in 'eighty-eight."

  "Sort of," Bosch replied. "It's more code. I worked one of these white power cases once and I remember all the codes. To these guys eighty-eight stands for double H because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Eighty-eight equals H-H equals Heil Hitler. They also use one ninety-eight for Sieg Heil. They're pretty clever, aren't they?"

  "I still think the year 'eighty-eight might have something to do with this."

  "Maybe it does. You got anything in there about employment?"

  "Looks like he drives a tow truck. He was driving a tow truck when he stopped to take the leak that got him the lewd and lash last time. This lists three different previous employers-all tow services."

  "That's good. That's a start."

  "We'll find him."

  Bosch looked back down at the arrest report in front of him. It was a burglary from 1990. Mackey had been caught by a police dog in the concessions shop of the Pacific Drive-in Theater. He had broken in after hours, setting off a silent alarm. He had pilfered the cash drawer and filled a plastic bag with two hundred candy bars. His exit was slowed because he decided to turn on the cheese warmer and make himself some nachos. He was still inside the building when a responding officer with a dog sent the animal inside the shop. The report said Mackey was treated for dog bite injuries to the left arm and upper left thigh at County-USC Medical Center before being booked.

  The record indicated that Mackey pleaded guilty to breaking and entering, a lesser charge, and was sentenced to time served-sixty-seven days in the Van Nuys jail-and two years probation.

  The next report was a violation of that probation for an assault arrest. Bosch was about to read the report when Rider took the sheaf of photocopies out of his hands.

  "It's time to go see Garcia," she said. "His sergeant said if we're late we'll miss him."

  She stood up and Bosch followed. They headed toward the Van Nuys Division. The Valley Bureau Command offices were on the third floor.

  "In nineteen ninety Mackey was popped for a burglary at the old Pacific Drive-in," Bosch said as they walked.

  "Okay."

  "It was at Winnetka and Prairie. There's a multiplex there now. That puts it about five or six blocks from where the Verloren weapon was stolen a couple years before. The burglary."

  "What do you think?"

  "Two burglaries five blocks apart. I think maybe he liked working that area. I think he stole the gun. Or he was with the person who stole it."

  Rider nodded and they went up the stairs to the police station lobby and then took the elevator the rest of the way up to Valley Bureau Command. They were on time but still were made to wait. While sitting on a couch Bosch said, "I remember that drive-in. I went there a couple times when I was a kid. The one in Van Nuys, too."

  "We had our own on the south side," Rider said.

  "They turn it into a multiplex, too?"

  "No. It's just a parking lot. They don't put multiplex money down there."

  "What about Magic Johnson?"

  Bosch knew the former Laker basketball star had invested heavily in the community, including opening movie theaters.

  "He's only one man."

  "One man is a start, I guess."

  A woman with P2 stripes on her uniform's sleeves came up to them.

  "The commander will see you now."

  9

  COMMANDER ARTURO GARCIA was standing behind his desk waiting as Bosch and Rider were led into his office by the uniformed assistant. Garcia was in uniform, too, and he wore it well and proudly. He had steel gray hair and a matching bottle-brush mustache. He exuded the confidence that the department used to carry and was fighting to recover.

&
nbsp; "Detectives, come in, come in," he said. "Sit down here and tell an old homicide dick how it's hanging."

  They took the chairs in front of the desk.