Echo Park Page 7

  “So what were you looking for?”

  “When?”

  “When you were acting like you were reading the newspaper but you really weren’t.”

  “Um, I . . . I guess I was trying to see if you were really interested in looking at this. You know, it sounds like you have a lot going. Maybe you don’t want to get into this sort of stuff again.”

  She held up half her sandwich but stopped herself from taking a bite.

  “I hate my job, okay? Or rather, I hate what I am doing right now. But it will get better. Another year and it will be better.”

  “Fine. And this? This is okay?”

  He pointed to the files on the table next to her plate.

  “Yes, but there is too much. I can’t even begin to help you. It’s information overload.”

  “I only have today.”

  “Why can’t you delay the interview?”

  “Because it’s not my interview to delay. And because it’s got politics on it. The prosecutor is running for DA. He needs headlines. He’s not going to wait for me to get up to speed.”

  She nodded.

  “All the way with Rick O’Shea.”

  “I had to push my way into the case because of Gesto. They’re not going to slow down to let me catch up.”

  She put her hand on top of the stack of files as if taking some sort of measure from them that would help her make a decision.

  “Let me keep the files when you drive me back. I’ll finish my work, clock out and continue with this. I’ll come see you tonight at your place and give you what I’ve got. Everything.”

  He stared at her, looking for the hidden meaning.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, as soon as I get through it. Nine o’clock at the latest. I have an early start tomorrow. Will that work?”

  He nodded. He wasn’t expecting this.

  “Do you still live in that house up on the hill?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’m there. Woodrow Wilson.”

  “Good. My place is down off Beverly, not too far. I’ll come up to your place. I remember the view.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. He wasn’t sure what he had just invited into his life.

  “Can I give you something to think about until then?” she asked. “Maybe do some checking?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “The name. Is that his real name?”

  Bosch frowned. He had never considered the name. He assumed it was real. Waits was incarcerated. His fingerprints would have been run through the system to confirm identity.

  “I assume so. His fingerprints matched a previous arrest. That previous time he tried to give a false name but a DMV thumbprint made him as Waits. Why?”

  “Do you know what a reynard is? Reynard spelled R-e-y instead of R-a-y.”

  Bosch shook his head. This was coming from left field. He hadn’t even been thinking about the name.

  “No, what is it?”

  “It’s a name for a young male fox. A young female is a vixen and the male is a reynard. I studied European folklore in college—back when I thought I wanted to be a diplomat. In medieval French folklore there is a character that is a fox named Reynard. He is a trickster. There are stories and epics about the scheming fox named Reynard. The character has appeared repeatedly through the centuries in books—children’s books mostly. You can Google it when you get back to the office and I am sure you will get many hits.”

  Bosch nodded. He wasn’t going to tell her he didn’t know how to Google. He barely knew how to e-mail his eight-year-old daughter. She tapped a finger on the stack of files.

  “A young fox would be a small fox,” she said. “In the description Mr. Waits is small in stature. You take it all in context of the full name and—”

  “The little fox waits,” Bosch said. “The young fox waits. The trickster waits.”

  “For the vixen. Maybe that’s how he saw it with his victims.”

  Bosch nodded. He was impressed.

  “We missed that. I can do some checking on the ID as soon as I get back.”

  “And hopefully I will have more for you tonight.”

  She went back to eating and Bosch went back to watching her.

  6

  AS SOON AS BOSCH dropped Rachel Walling at her car he opened his phone and called his partner. Rider reported that she was finishing up the paperwork on the Matarese case and that they would soon be good to go on it and able to file charges at the DA’s office the following day.

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “I got the box on Fitzpatrick from Evidence Archives and it turned out to be two boxes.”

  “Containing what?”

  “Mostly old pawn records that I can tell were never even looked at. They were sopping wet back then from when the fire was put out. The guys from Riot Crimes put them in plastic tubs and they’ve been moldering in them ever since. And, man, do they stink.”

  Bosch nodded as he computed this. It was a dead end and it didn’t matter. Raynard Waits was about to confess to the killing of Daniel Fitzpatrick anyway. He could tell that Rider was looking at it the same way. An uncoerced confession is a royal flush. It beats everything.

  “Have you heard from Olivas or O’Shea?” Rider asked.

  “Not yet. I was going to call Olivas but wanted to talk to you first. Do you know anybody in city licensing?”

  “No, but if you want me to call over there I can in the morning. They’re closed now. What are you looking for?”

  Bosch checked his watch. He didn’t realize how late it had gotten. He guessed that the omelet at Duffy’s was going to count as breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  “I was thinking we should run Waits’s business and see how long he’s had it, whether there were ever any complaints, that sort of thing. Olivas and his partner should have done it but there is nothing in the files about it.”

  She was silent for a while before speaking.

  “You think that could have been the connection to the High Tower?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe to Marie. She had a nice big picture window in her apartment. It isn’t something I remember coming up back then. But maybe we missed it.”

  “Harry, you never miss a thing, but I’ll get on it right away.”

  “The other thing is the guy’s name. It could be phony.”

  “How so?”

  He told her about contacting Rachel Walling and asking her to look at the files. This was initially met with resounding silence because Bosch had crossed one of those invisible LAPD lines by inviting the FBI into the case without command approval, even if the invitation to Walling was unofficial. But when Bosch told Rider about Reynard the Fox she dropped her silence and became skeptical.

  “You think our window-washing serial killer was schooled in medieval folklore?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “Walling says he could have picked it up from a children’s book. Doesn’t matter. There is enough there that I think we’ve got to look at birth certificates, make sure there is someone named Raynard Waits. In the first file, when he was popped for prowling in ’ninety-three, he was booked under the name Robert Saxon—the name he gave—but then they got Raynard Waits when his thumbprint hit the DMV computer.”

  “What are you seeing there, Harry? If they had his thumb on file back then, I’m thinking maybe the name isn’t phony after all.”

  “Maybe. But you know it isn’t impossible to get a DL with a false name on it in this state. What if Saxon actually was his real name but the computer spit out his alias and he just went with it? We’ve seen it happen before.”

  “Then why keep the name after? He had a record under Waits. Why not go back to Saxon or whatever his real name is?”

  “Good questions. I don’t know. But we’ve got to check it out.”

  “Well, we’ve got him no matter what his name is. I’ll Google Raynard the Fox right now.”

  “Spell it with an e.”

  He waited and could hear her fingers on the comp
uter keyboard.

  “Got it,” she finally said. “There’s a lot of stuff about Reynard the Fox.”

  “That’s what Walling said.”

  There was silence for a long moment while Rider read. Then she spoke.

  “Says here that part of the legend is that Reynard the Fox had a secret castle that nobody could find. He used all kinds of trickery to draw his victims close. Then he would take them back to the castle and eat them.”

  That hung out there untouched for a while. Finally Bosch spoke.

  “Do you have time to run another AutoTrack and see if you can get anything on Robert Saxon?”

  “Sure.”

  There was not a lot of conviction in her tone. But Bosch wasn’t going to let her off the hook. He wanted to keep things in motion.

  “Read me his DOB off the arrest report,” Rider said.

  “I can’t. I don’t have it here.”

  “Where is it? I don’t see it on your desk.”

  “I gave the files to Agent Walling. I’ll get them back later tonight. You’ll have to go on the computer to pull the arrest report.”

  A lengthy silence went by before Rider responded.

  “Harry, those are official investigative files. You know you shouldn’t have parted with them. And we’re going to need them tomorrow for the interview.”

  “I told you, I’ll have them back tonight.”

  “Let’s hope so. But I’ve gotta tell you, partner, you’re doing the cowboy thing again and I don’t like it very much.”

  “Kiz, I’m just trying to keep things moving. And I want to be ready for this guy in that room tomorrow. What Walling is giving me will give us an edge.”

  “Fine. I trust you. Maybe at some point you will trust me enough to ask my opinion before you go off and make decisions that affect both of us.”

  Bosch felt his cheeks flare hot, mostly because he knew she was right. He didn’t say anything because he knew that apologizing for leaving her out of the loop wasn’t going to cut it.

  “Call me back if Olivas gives us a time for tomorrow,” she said.

  “You got it.”

  After closing the phone Bosch thought about things for a moment. He tried to move on from his embarrassment over Rider’s indignation. He focused on the case and what he had left out of the investigation so far. After a few minutes he reopened the phone, called Olivas and asked if a time and place had been set for the Waits interview.

  “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock,” Olivas said. “Don’t be late.”

  “Were you going to tell me, Olivas, or was I supposed to pick it up telepathically?”

  “I just found out myself. You called me before I could call you.”

  Bosch ignored his excuse.

  “Where?”

  “The DA’s office. We’ll have him brought down from high-power and set him up in an interview room here.”

  “You’re at the DA’s now?”

  “I had some things to go over with Rick.”

  Bosch let that float out there without a response.

  “Anything else?” Olivas asked.

  “Yeah, I have a question,” Bosch said. “Where’s your partner in all of this, Olivas? What happened to Colbert?”

  “He’s in Hawaii. He’ll be back next week. If this thing carries over till then he’ll be part of it.”

  Bosch wondered if Colbert even knew what was happening or that he was missing out on a potentially career-making case while he was off on vacation. From everything Bosch knew about Olivas, there would be no surprise if he was scheming to ace out his own partner on a glory case.

  “Ten o’clock, then?” Bosch asked.

  “Ten.”

  “Anything else I should know, Olivas?”

  He was curious about why Olivas was at the DA’s office but didn’t want to directly ask why.

  “Matter of fact, there is one more thing. Sort of a delicate thing, you could say. I’ve been talking to Rick about it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, take a guess at what I’m looking at here.”

  Bosch blew out his breath. Olivas was going to string it out. Bosch had known him less than one day and already knew without a doubt that he didn’t like the man and never would.

  “I have no idea, Olivas. What?”

  “Your fifty-ones from Gesto.”

  He was referring to the Investigative Chronology, a master listing kept by date and time of all aspects of a case, ranging from an accounting of detectives’ time and movements to notations on routine phone calls and messages to media inquiries and tips from citizens. Usually, these were handwritten with all manner of shorthand and abbreviations employed as they were updated throughout each day, sometimes hourly. Then, when a page became full, it was typed up on a form called a 51, which would be complete and legible when and if the case ever moved into the courts, and lawyers, judges and juries needed to review the investigative files. The original handwritten pages were then discarded.

  “What about them?” Bosch asked.

  “I’m looking at the last line on page fourteen. The listing is for September twenty-ninth, nineteen ninety-three, at six-forty p.m. Must’ve been quitting time. The initials on the entry are JE.”

  Bosch felt the bile rising in his throat. Whatever it was Olivas was getting at, he was enjoying milking it.

  “Obviously,” he said impatiently, “that would’ve been my partner at the time, Jerry Edgar. What’s the entry say, Olivas?”

  “It says . . . I’ll just read it. It says, ‘Robert Saxon DOB eleven/three/’seventy-one. Saw Times story. Was at Mayfair and saw MG alone. Nobody following.’ It gives Saxon’s phone number and that’s all it says. But that’s enough, Hotshot. You know what it means?”

  Bosch did. He had just given the name Robert Saxon to Kiz Rider to background. It was either an alias or perhaps the real name of the man known currently as Raynard Waits. That name on the 51s now connected Waits to the Gesto case. It also meant that thirteen years ago Bosch and Edgar had at least a shot at Waits/Saxon. But for reasons he didn’t recall or didn’t know about they never took it. He did not recall the specific entry in the 51s. There were dozens of pages in the Investigative Chronology filled with one- and two-line entries. Remembering them all—even with his frequent returns to the investigation over the years—would have been impossible.

  It took him a long moment to find his voice.

  “That’s the only mention in the murder book?” he asked.

  “That I’ve seen,” Olivas said. “I’ve been through everything twice. I even missed it the first time through. Then the second time I said, ‘Hey, I know that name.’ It’s an alias Waits used back in the early nineties. It should be in the files you have.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “It meant he called you guys, Bosch. The killer called you, and you and your partner blew it. Looks like nobody ever followed up with him or ran his name through the box. You had the killer’s alias and a phone number and didn’t do anything. ’Course, you didn’t know he was the killer. Just some citizen calling in about what he saw. He must’ve been trying to play you guys in some way, trying to find out about the case. Only Edgar didn’t play. It was late in the day and he probably wanted to get to that first martini.”

  Bosch said nothing and Olivas was only too happy to continue to fill the void.

  “Too bad, you know? Maybe this whole thing could’ve ended right then. I guess we’ll ask Waits about it in the morning.”

  Olivas and his petty world no longer mattered to Bosch. The barbs couldn’t penetrate the thick, dark cloud that was already coming down on him. For he knew that if the name Robert Saxon had come up in the Gesto investigation, then it should have been routinely run through the computer. It would have scored a match in the alias database and taken them to Raynard Waits and his prior arrest for prowling. That would have made him a suspect. Not just a person of interest like Anthony Garland. A strong suspect. And that would have undoubtedly ta
ken the investigation in a whole new direction.

  But that never happened. Apparently neither Edgar nor Bosch had run the name through the box. It was an oversight that Bosch now knew had probably cost the lives of the two women who ended up in trash bags and the seven others Waits was going to tell them about the next day.

  “Olivas?” Bosch said.

  “What, Bosch?”

  “Make sure you bring the book with you tomorrow. I want to see the fifty-ones.”

  “Oh, I will. We’ll need it to do the interview.”

  Bosch closed his phone without another word. He felt the pace of his breathing increase. Soon he was close to hyperventilating. His back felt hot against the car seat and he was starting to sweat. He opened the windows and tried to slow the measure of each breath. He was close to Parker Center but pulled to a stop at the curb.

  It was every detective’s nightmare. The worst-case scenario. A lead ignored or bungled, allowing something awful to be loose in the world. Something dark and evil, destroying life after life as it moved through the shadows. It was true that all detectives made mistakes and had to live with the regrets. But Bosch instinctively knew that this one was malignant. It would grow and grow inside until it darkened everything and he became the last victim, the last life destroyed.

  He pulled out from the curb and into traffic to get air moving through the windows. He made a screeching U-turn and headed home.

  7

  FROM THE REAR DECK OF HIS HOUSE Bosch watched the sky start to dim. He lived up on Woodrow Wilson Drive in a cantilevered house that clung to the side of the hill like a cartoon character hanging on to the edge of a cliff. Sometimes Bosch felt like that character. Like on this night. He was drinking vodka sprinkled liberally over ice, the first time he’d gone with hard liquor since coming back on the job the year before. The vodka made his throat feel as though he had swallowed a torch, but that was okay. He was trying to burn away his thoughts and cauterize his nerve endings.

  Bosch considered himself a true detective, one who took it all inside and cared. Everybody counts or nobody counts. That’s what he always said. It made him good at the job but it also made him vulnerable. The mistakes could get to him and this one was the worst of all mistakes.