The Closers (2005) Read online

  "Thank you for seeing us so quickly," Rider said.

  Bosch and Rider had decided that she would take the lead with Garcia since she was more familiar with him through her liaison work in the chief's office. Bosch also wasn't sure he would be able to disguise his distaste for Garcia and the mistakes and missteps he and his partner had made on the Verloren investigation.

  "Well, when Robbery-Homicide calls, you make the time, right?"

  He smiled again.

  "We actually work in the Open-Unsolved Unit," Rider said.

  Garcia lost his smile and for a moment Bosch thought he saw a flash of pain enter his eyes. Rider had made the appointment through an assistant in the commander's office and had not revealed what case they were working.

  "Becky Verloren," the commander said.

  Rider nodded.

  "How did you know?"

  "How did I know? I was the one who called that guy down there, the OIC, and I told him there was DNA on that case and they ought to send it through."

  "Detective Pratt?"

  "Yeah, Pratt. As soon as that unit was up and operational I called him and said check out Becky Verloren, nineteen eighty-eight. What have you got? You got a match, right?"

  Rider nodded.

  "We got a very good match."

  "Who? I've been waiting seventeen years for this. Somebody from the restaurant, right?"

  This gave Bosch pause. In the murder book there were interview summaries from people who worked in Robert Verloren's restaurant but nothing that rose above the routine. Nothing that indicated suspicion or follow-up. Nothing in the investigative summaries that pointed the case toward the restaurant. To now hear one of the original investigators voice a long-held suspicion that the killer had come from that direction was incongruous with what they had spent the morning reading.

  "Actually, no," Rider said. "The DNA matches a man named Roland Mackey. He was eighteen at the time of the murder. He was in Chatsworth at the time. We don't think he worked at the restaurant."

  Garcia frowned as though he was puzzled or maybe disappointed.

  "Does that name mean anything to you?" Rider asked. "We didn't come across it anywhere in the book."

  Garcia shook his head.

  "I don't place it, but it's been a long time. Who is he?"

  "We don't know who he is yet. We're circling him. We're just starting."

  "I'm sure I would have remembered the name. His blood was on the gun, right?"

  "That's what we got. He's got a history. Burglaries, receiving, drugs. We're thinking he might be good for the burglary when the gun was taken."

  "Absolutely," Garcia said, as if his excitement for the idea could make it so.

  "We can connect him to the gun, no doubt," Rider said. "But we're looking for the connection to the girl. We thought maybe you'd remember something."

  "Have you talked to the mother and father yet?"

  "Not yet. You're our first stop."

  "That poor family. That was it for them."

  "You stayed in touch with the parents?"

  "Initially, yeah. As long as I had the case. But once I made lieutenant and went back to patrol I had to give up the case. I kind of lost contact with them after that. It was Muriel mostly-the mother-who I had talked to. The father . . . there was something going on with him. He didn't do well. He left home, they divorced, the whole thing. Lost the restaurant. Last I heard, he was living on the street. He would show up at the house from time to time and ask Muriel for money."

  "What made you guess it was somebody from the restaurant when we came in here?"

  Garcia shook his head like he was frustrated by reaching for a memory he couldn't quite grasp.

  "I don't know," he said. "I can't remember. It was more like a feeling. There was stuff wrong with the case. Something was hinky about it."

  "How so?"

  "Well, you read the book, I'm sure. She wasn't raped. She was carried up that hill and it was made to look like a suicide. It was done badly. It was really an execution. So we weren't talking about the random intruder. Somebody she knew wanted her dead. And they either went in that house or sent somebody in that house."

  "You think it was related to the pregnancy?" Rider asked.

  Garcia nodded.

  "We thought that was tied in but we could never nail it down."

  "MTL-you never figured that one out."

  Garcia looked at her, confusion on his face.

  "Empty L?"

  "No, M-T-L. The initials Rebecca used in her journal. You mentioned it in the formal interview with the parents. 'My true love,' remember?"

  "Oh, yeah, the initials. It was like a code. We never knew for sure. We never found out who that was. Are you looking for the journal?"

  Bosch nodded and Rider spoke.

  "We're looking for everything. The journal, the gun, the whole evidence carton is lost somewhere in the ESB."

  Garcia shook his head like a man who had spent a career dealing with the department's frustrations.

  "That is not surprising. Par for the course, right?"

  "Right."

  "Tell you one thing, though. If they find the carton there won't be any journal in it."

  "Why?"

  "Because I gave it back."

  "To the parents?"

  "To the mother. Like I said, I made lieutenant and was shipping out, going to South Bureau. Ron Green had already retired. I was passing the case off and I knew that was going to be the end of it. Nobody was going to pay attention to it like we did. So I told Muriel I was leaving and I gave her the journal . . .

  "That poor woman. It was like time stood still for her on that day in July. She became frozen. Couldn't go forward, couldn't go back. I remember I went to see her before I left. This was a year or so after the murder. She had me look at Becky's bedroom. It was untouched. It was exactly the way it was on the night she was taken."

  Rider nodded somberly. Garcia said nothing else. Bosch finally cleared his throat, leaned forward and spoke, hitting Garcia with the same question again.

  "When we first came in and said we got a DNA match, you guessed it was somebody from the restaurant. Why?"

  Bosch looked at Rider to see if she was annoyed that he was entering the questioning. She didn't appear to be.

  "I don't know why," Garcia said. "Like I said, I always sort of thought that it might have come from that side of things, because I never felt we nailed everything down over there."

  "You're talking about the father?"

  Garcia nodded.

  "The father was hinky. I don't know if you even say that anymore. But back then the word was hinky."

  "How so?" Rider asked. "How was the father hinky?"

  Before Garcia could answer the question one of the uniformed adjutants came into the office.

  "Commander? They're all in the conference room and ready to start."

  "Okay, Sergeant. I'll be there shortly."

  After the sergeant left, Garcia looked back at Rider as if he had forgotten the question.

  "There is nothing in the murder book that casts any suspicion on the father," Rider said. "Why did you think he was hinky?"

  "Oh, I don't really know. Sort of a gut feeling. He never really acted like you would think a father would act, you know? He was too quiet. He never got mad, never yelled-I mean, somebody took his little girl. He never once took Ron or me aside and said, 'I want first shot at the guy when you find him.' I expected that."

  As far as Bosch was concerned, everybody was still a suspect, even with the cold hit tying Mackey to the murder weapon. This certainly included Robert Verloren. But he immediately dismissed Garcia's gut instinct based on the father's emotional responses to his daughter's murder. He knew from working hundreds of murders that there was absolutely no way to judge such responses or to build suspicion on them. Bosch had seen every permutation of it and it all meant nothing. One of the biggest criers and screamers he had ever encountered on a case ended up being the killer.<
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  In dismissing Garcia's instinct and suspicion Bosch was also dismissing Garcia. He and Green had made early mistakes but recovered to conduct a by-the-numbers investigation of the murder. The murder book bore this out. But Bosch now guessed that whatever was done well was probably done by Green. He knew he should have suspected as much when he heard that Garcia had given up homicide for management.

  "How long did you work homicide?" Bosch asked.

  "Three years."

  "All in Devonshire Division?"

  "That's right."

  Bosch quickly did the math. Devonshire would have had a light caseload. He figured that Garcia had worked no more than a couple dozen murders at the most. It wasn't enough experience to do it well. He decided to move on.

  "What about your former partner?" he asked. "Did he feel the same way about Robert Verloren?"

  "He was willing to give the guy a little more slack than me."

  "Are you still in touch with him?"

  "Who, the father?"

  "No. Green."

  "No, he retired way back."

  "I know, but are you still in touch?"

  Garcia shook his head.

  "No, he's dead. He retired up to Humboldt County. He should've left his gun down here. All that time and nothing to do up there."

  "He killed himself?"

  Garcia nodded.

  Bosch looked down at the floor. It wasn't Ron Green's death that struck him. He didn't know Green. It was the loss of the connection to the case. He knew Garcia wasn't going to be much help.

  "What about race?" Bosch asked, again stepping on Rider's lead.

  "What about it?" Garcia asked. "In this case? I don't see it."

  "Interracial couple, biracial kid, the gun came from a burglary where the victim was being harassed on religious lines."

  "That's a stretch. You got something with this Mackey character?"

  "There might be something."

  "Well, we didn't have the luxury of a named suspect to work with. We didn't see any aspect of that with what we had back then."

  Garcia said it forcefully and Bosch knew he had touched a nerve. He didn't like to be second-guessed. No detective did. Even an inexperienced one.

  "I know it's Monday-morning quarterbacking to start with the guy and go backwards," Rider quickly said. "It's just something we're looking at."

  Garcia seemed placated.

  "I understand," he said. "Leave no stone unturned."

  He stood up.

  "Well, Detectives, I hate to rush this. I wish we could kick this around all day. I used to put people in jail. Now I go into meetings about budget and deployment."

  That's what you deserve, Bosch thought. He glanced at Rider, wondering if she understood that he had saved her from a similar fate when he talked her into partnering with him in the Open-Unsolved Unit.

  "Do me a favor," Garcia said. "When you hook up this guy Mackey, let me know. Maybe I'll come down and look through the window at him. I've been waiting for this one."

  "No problem, sir," Rider said, breaking her stare away from Bosch. "We'll do that. If you think of anything else that might help us with this, give me a call. All my numbers are on this."

  She stood up, placing a business card down on the table.

  "I'll do it."

  Garcia started to go around his desk to head to his meeting.

  "There's something we might need you to do," Bosch said.

  Garcia stopped in his tracks and looked at him.

  "What is it, Detective? I need to get in that meeting."

  "We might try to flush the birds out of the bushes with a newspaper story. It might be good if it came from you. You know, former homicide guy, now a commander, haunted by the old case. He calls Open-Unsolved and gets them to run the DNA through the pipeline. What do you know, they get a cold hit."

  Garcia nodded. Bosch could tell it played to his ego perfectly.

  "Yeah, it might work. Whatever you want to do. Just call me and we'll set it up. The Daily News? I've got connections there. It's the Valley paper."

  Bosch nodded.

  "Yeah, that's what we were thinking," he said.

  "Good. Let me know. I've got to go."

  He quickly left the office. Rider and Bosch looked at each other and then followed. Out in the hallway, waiting for the elevator, Rider asked Bosch what he was doing when he asked him about planting the news story.

  "He'd be perfect for the story because he doesn't know what he's talking about."

  "So, we don't want that. We want to be careful."

  "Don't worry. It'll work."

  The elevator opened and they got on. No one else was in it. As soon as the door closed Rider was on him.

  "Harry, let's get something straight right now. We're either partners or we're not. You should have told me you were going to hit him with that. We should've talked about it first."

  Bosch nodded.

  "You're right," he said. "We're partners. It won't happen again."

  "Good."

  The elevator door opened and she stepped out, leaving Bosch behind.

  10

  HILLSIDE PREPARATORY SCHOOL was a structure of Spanish design nestled against the hills of Porter Ranch. Its campus was marked by magnificent green lawns and the daunting rise of mountains behind it. The mountains almost seemed to cradle the school and protect it. Bosch thought it looked like a place that any parent would want their child to go. He thought about his own daughter, just a year away from starting school. He would want her to go to a school that looked like this-on the outside, at least.

  He and Rider followed signs that led them to the administration offices. At a front counter Bosch showed his badge and explained that they wanted to see if a student named Roland Mackey had ever attended Hillside. The clerk disappeared into a back office and soon a man emerged. His most notable features were a basketball-sized paunch and thick glasses shaded by bushy eyebrows. Across his forehead his hair left the perfect line of a toupee.

  "I'm Gordon Stoddard, principal here at Hillside. Mrs. Atkins told me you are detectives. I'm having her check that name for you. It didn't ring a bell with me and I've been here almost twenty-five years. Do you know exactly when he attended? It might help her with the search."

  Bosch was surprised. Stoddard looked like he was in his mid-forties. He must have come to Hillside fresh from his own schooling and never left. Bosch didn't know if that was a testament to what they paid teachers here or Stoddard's own dedication to the place. But from what he knew about teachers private and public, he doubted it was the pay.

  "We'd be talking about the eighties, if he went here. That's a long time ago for you to remember."

  "Yes, but I have a memory for the students that have come through. Most of them. I haven't been principal for twenty-five years. I was a teacher first. I taught science and then I was dean of the science department."

  "Do you remember Rebecca Verloren?" Rider asked.

  Stoddard blanched.

  "Yes, as a matter of fact I do. I taught her science. Is that what this is about? Have you arrested this boy, Mackey? I mean, I guess he'd be a man now. Is he the one?"

  "We don't know that, sir," Bosch said quickly. "We're reviewing the case and his name came up and we need to check on it. That's all."

  "Did you see the plaque?" Stoddard asked.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Outside on the wall in the main hallway. There is a plaque dedicated to Rebecca. The students in her class collected the funds for it and had it made. It is quite nice but of course it is also quite sad. But it does serve its purpose. People around here remember Rebecca Verloren."

  "We missed it. We'll look at it on our way out."

  "A lot of people still remember her. This school might not pay that well, and most of the faculty might have to work two jobs to make ends meet, but it has a very loyal faculty nonetheless. There are several teachers still here who taught Rebecca. We have one, Mrs. Sable, who was actually a student with her
and then returned here to teach. In fact, Bailey was one of her good friends, I believe."

  Bosch glanced at Rider, who raised her eyebrows. They had a plan for approaching Becky Verloren's friends but here was an opportunity presenting itself. Bosch had recognized the name Bailey. One of the three friends Becky Verloren had spent the evening with two nights before her disappearance was named Bailey Koster.