The Crossing Page 8

  “I understand that, but like I said, do what you gotta do. I’m not drunk, I’m not impaired, and I gave no cause to be pulled over. This whole thing is bullshit. You have a dash cam on that car?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s okay. There are plenty of other cameras on Hollywood Boulevard.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I don’t need luck.”

  “I take it, sir, you are a lawyer.”

  “That’s right. But you already knew that.”

  Ellis noticed that a patrol car had pulled in behind their unmarked sedan as backup. He took the snap tie out of the pocket of his windbreaker.

  “Could you bring your right hand off the car and behind your back, please?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Ellis used the snap tie to bind Haller’s hands behind his back. He pulled the plastic strap tight but Haller didn’t complain.

  After Haller had been taken by the uniforms to the hospital for the drawing of blood, Ellis put on crime scene gloves, then took the air wedge and slim jim out of the trunk of his own car and approached the Lincoln.

  Haller thought he was smart locking his keys in his car but Ellis knew he was smarter. He waited for a wave of traffic to go by and then worked the wedge into the crack between the front door’s window frame and the body of the car. He started squeezing the hand pump and the wedge slowly expanded, prying open a one-inch space. He slid the metal strip through and punched the electronic unlock button on the door’s armrest. He heard the locks pop on all four doors. He knew the alarm was now disengaged and opened the front door. He reached in and popped the trunk. He knew from previous surveillance of Haller that the lawyer worked out of his car and kept his files in the trunk. The uniforms had called the police garage to impound the car. Ellis figured that gave him at least a half hour with those files before the tow truck arrived.

  He noticed the lawyer’s phone on the car seat. He leaned in and picked it up and engaged the screen but saw it was password protected and useless to him. He was about to toss it back when he saw a call coming in on it. The caller ID said it was from someone named Jennifer Aronson. He didn’t recognize the name but put it in his memory bank and threw the phone back on the seat.

  He closed the front door and opened the back. Leaning in and looking around, he saw a briefcase on the floor behind the driver’s seat. He opened it on the seat and looked through its contents. There were three legal pads with illegible notes on each of them. Different cases got separate legal pads. There was also a stack of business cards bundled with a rubber band. Nothing else of note. Ellis closed the case and put it back down on the floor. He backed out and closed the door.

  As he went to the trunk, he checked his partner in the plain-wrap, who was monitoring the police radio. Long gave Ellis a thumbs-up. All was good. Ellis nodded.

  In the trunk he saw three long cardboard file boxes sitting side by side. The mother lode. He quickly ticked his latexed finger over the tabs until he reached one marked Foster.

  “Bingo,” he said.

  10

  The door to his daughter’s room was closed but Bosch saw the light on underneath it. He tapped lightly.

  “Hey, I’m home,” he said.

  “Hi, Dad,” she called back.

  He waited for an invite. Nothing. He knocked again.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure. It’s unlocked.”

  He opened the door. She was standing by the end of the bed, bent over and shoving a sleeping bag into a large, wheeled duffel bag. The trip wasn’t for a few days but she was putting together everything that was on the list they gave her at school.

  “Did you eat yet?” he asked. “I brought some stuff from Panera.”

  “I ate already,” she said. “I didn’t hear from you, so I made tuna.”

  “You could have texted.”

  “You could have texted too.”

  Bosch decided not to go further into their communication practices. He didn’t want to set things off. He pointed at the duffel bag and the array of camping supplies spread on the floor of the room.

  “So are you excited?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said. “I don’t know how to camp.”

  He wondered if that was a criticism of him. He had never taken her camping. He had never been taken camping, unless his time sleeping in tents and holes in Vietnam counted.

  “Well,” he said, “you’ll learn now. You’ll be with friends and it will be fun.”

  “All people I’ll probably never see again after I graduate,” she said. “I don’t know why we—All I’m saying is this should be an optional camping trip. Not required.”

  Bosch nodded. She was in a mood that would grow darker with every effort he made to cheer her up. He had been down this path before.

  “Well, I’ve got some reading to do,” he said. “Good night, baby.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  He stepped over and kissed her on the top of the head. He then gestured to the huge gray duffel bag on the floor.

  “You should probably carry the sleeping bag separate,” he said. “It will take up too much room in there.”

  “No,” she said curtly. “They said everything has to be in one duffel bag and this is the biggest one I could find.”

  “Okay, sorry.”

  “Dad, how much have you had to drink, anyway?”

  “One martini. With your uncle. I left, he didn’t.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I left. I have work to do. Look, good night. Okay?”

  “Good night.”

  Bosch closed the door as he left the room. He reminded himself that his daughter was at a point in her life with a lot of stressors. She was learning to deal with them, but he was often the target when she let them out. He couldn’t blame her or feel bad. But knowing that was the easy part.

  He did feel bad about throwing Uncle Mickey under the bus. He went into the kitchen to eat by himself.

  11

  At 9 a.m. sharp Bosch approached the attorney check-in window in the lobby of the men’s central jail, but Mickey Haller was nowhere to be seen. There was a young woman standing to the side of the window holding an attaché case and she studied Bosch as he approached.

  “Mr. Bosch?” she asked.

  Bosch paused for a moment and didn’t answer. He was still not used to being addressed as “Mr.”

  “That’s me,” he finally said.

  The woman held out her hand. Bosch had to move the file he was holding to his other hand to shake hers.

  “I’m Jennifer Aronson. I work for Mr. Haller.”

  If Bosch had met her before he didn’t remember it.

  “He’s supposed to be here,” he said.

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “He’s tied up at the moment but I will get you in to see Mr. Foster.”

  “Don’t I need an attorney to go with me?”

  “I am an attorney, Mr. Bosch. I am associate counsel on this case. I’ve handled a few filings on your civil case.”

  Bosch realized he had insulted her, assuming that based on her age—she had to be younger than thirty—she was Haller’s secretary instead of his associate.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “But I expected him to be here. Where exactly is he?”

  “Something came up that he had to handle and he was delayed but he will try to join us shortly.”

  “That’s not really good enough. I’m going to call him.”

  Bosch stepped away from the check-in window to use his phone. Aronson followed him.

  “You’re not going to reach him,” she said. “Why don’t we check in and start the interview and Mr. Haller will get here as soon as he can.”

  Bosch ended the call when Haller’s recorded voice picked up and asked him to leave a message. He looked at the woman. He could read that she was lying or holding something back.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?” she said. />
  “Where is he? You’re not telling me something.”

  She looked disappointed in herself for not being able to get past Bosch.

  “All right,” she said. “He’s over at city jail. He was picked up on a trumped-up DUI last night. I’ve posted his bail and he’s waiting to be released.”

  “I was with him last night,” Bosch said. “What time did this happen?”

  “Around ten o’clock.”

  “Why do you say it was trumped up?”

  “Because he called me while he was being pulled over and told me. He said they had to have been waiting for him outside Musso’s. It happens often. Targeted enforcement. People get set up.”

  “Well, was he drunk? I left him there at seven-thirty or eight. He stayed another two hours or more.”

  “He told me no and he’s going to be upset that I told you any of this. Please, can we check in now and set up the interview?”

  Bosch shook his head once. This whole thing felt like it was slipping sideways and turning tawdry.

  “Let’s get it over with,” he said.

  “Here, you’ll need this,” she said, reaching into her attaché.

  She handed him a folded piece of paper.

  “It’s a letter that says you are an investigator working for Mr. Haller on this case,” she said. “Technically, you are working under the license of Dennis Wojciechowski.”

  It sounded like she pronounced the name Watch-Your-House-Key. Bosch unfolded the letter and quickly read it. It was a point of no return. He knew that if he accepted it and used it to get into the jail, then he would officially be a defense investigator.

  “You sure I need this?” he asked.

  “If you want to get in to see him you need legal standing,” she said.

  Bosch put the letter in the pocket inside his jacket.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  Da’Quan Foster was not what Bosch had expected. Because of the brutality of the murder of Lexi Parks, he had expected to see a man of imposing size and musculature. Foster had neither. He was a thin man in jailhouse blues that were two sizes too big. Bosch realized that his wrongful assumption was rooted in his being predisposed to believe Foster was guilty of the crime.

  A jail deputy placed Foster in a chair across the table from Bosch and Aronson. He removed the handcuffs from Foster’s wrists and then left the small room. Foster had his hair in tight cornrows. He had a lipstick kiss tattooed on the left side of his neck and another tattoo in blue ink on the other side that Bosch could not read against his dark brown skin. Foster looked confused by the two people in front of him. Aronson quickly made introductions.

  “Mr. Foster, I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Jennifer Aronson and I work with Mr. Haller. I was with him at your arraignment and then at the preliminary hearing.”

  Foster nodded as he remembered her.

  “You a lawyer?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m one of your lawyers,” she said. “And I want to introduce you to Mr. Bosch, who is working as our investigator on the case. He has some questions for you.”

  Bosch didn’t bother to correct her. He had not officially agreed to come on board yet—despite what the letter said.

  “Where Haller at?” Foster said.

  “He’s tied up on another case at the moment,” Aronson said. “But he plans to be here soon—before Mr. Bosch is finished.”

  Tied up on another case was one way of putting it, Bosch thought.

  Foster turned his eyes toward Bosch and apparently didn’t like what he saw.

  “You look like five-oh to me,” he said.

  Bosch nodded.

  “I was.”

  “LAPD?”

  Bosch nodded again.

  “Fuck that,” Foster said. “I want somebody else on my case. I ain’t want no LAPD on my side.”

  “Mr. Foster,” Aronson said. “First of all, you don’t get to choose. And second, Mr. Bosch specializes in homicide investigations and is one of the best in the business.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Foster said. “Down south side the murder cops didn’t do shit. Back when I was running with a crew, we lost nine guys in five years and the LAPD didn’t make no arrests, no trials, nothin’.”

  “I didn’t work south side,” Bosch said.

  Foster folded his arms and turned his head to ignore Bosch and look at the wall to his left. Bosch could now clearly see the tattoos on the right side of his neck. There was the standard Crips symbol, a 6 in the center of a six-pointed star created by one triangle with a second inverted triangle over it. Bosch knew the points of the star stood for things that the street gang was supposedly founded on—life, loyalty, love, knowledge, wisdom, and understanding. Next to the symbol was a stylized script tattoo that said Tookie RIP. Bosch also knew that this was a reference to Stanley “Tookie” Williams, the well-known cofounder of the gang, who was executed at San Quentin.

  Bosch continued.

  “You say you didn’t commit the murder you are charged with. If that is true, I can help you. If you are lying, I’m going to hurt you. It’s as simple as that. You want me to go, I’ll go. It’s not my ass on the line here.”

  Foster turned his eyes quickly back to Bosch.

  “Fuck you, man. If you’re LAPD, then you don’t care whether I did it or not. Just as long as you got somebody to pay for it, that’s all you people care about. You think if I didn’t do this, then I did something else, so what the fuck, same difference.”

  Bosch looked at Aronson.

  “We’ll be fine,” he said. “Why don’t you go see if you can find Mickey and bring him in here?”

  “I think I should stay here while we conduct the interview,” she said.

  “No, we’ll be fine. I’m conducting the interview and you can go.”

  He gave her a hard look and she got the message. She stood up, insulted again, and went to the door and knocked. As soon as the guard opened the door she stepped out. Bosch watched her go and then turned back to Foster.

  “Mr. Foster, I’m not here because I want you to be my friend. And you don’t need me to be yours. But I’ll tell you this. If you are innocent of this crime, then you don’t want anybody else but me on it. Because if you’re innocent, that means there is somebody else out there, not in jail, who did this. And I’m going to find him.”

  Bosch opened the file and slid one of the crime scene photos across the table. It was a close-up color shot of Alexandra Parks’s brutalized and unrecognizable face. The reports in the murder book said that when her husband found her, a pillow had been placed over her face. In the psychological profile of the crime scene contained in the murder book, it was suggested that the killer did this because he was ashamed of what he had done and was covering it up. If that was the case, Bosch was expecting a reaction from Foster when he saw the horror of the crime.

  He got one. Foster glanced down at the photo and then jerked his head back and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Oh my lord! Oh my lord!”

  Bosch watched him closely, studying his reaction. He believed that in the next few seconds he would decide whether Foster had murdered Alexandra Parks. He was a one-man jury reading the nuances of facial expression before rendering a verdict.

  “Take it away,” Foster said.

  “No, I want you to look at it,” Bosch said.

  “I can’t.”

  Without bringing his eyes down from the ceiling Foster pointed at the photo on the table.

  “I can’t believe this. They say I did that, that I would do that to a woman’s face.”

  “That’s right.”

  “My mother will be at the trial and they’ll show that?”

  “Probably. Unless the judge says it’s too prejudicial—good chance of that, I’d say.”

  Foster made some kind of keening sound from the back of his throat. A wounded animal sound.

  “Look at me, Da’Quan,” Bosch said. “Look at me.”

  Foster sl
owly brought his head and gaze down and looked at Bosch, maintaining an eye-line focus that did not include the photo on the table. Bosch read pain and sympathy in his eyes. He had sat across the table from many murderers in his time as a detective. Most of them, especially the psychopaths, were very good liars. But in the end it was always the eyes that betrayed them. Psychopaths are cold. They can talk sympathy but they can’t show it in their eyes. Bosch always looked at their eyes.

  “Did you do this, Da’Quan?” Bosch asked.

  “I didn’t,” Foster said.

  What Bosch believed he saw in Da’Quan Foster’s eyes now was the truth. He reached over and flipped the photograph over so it was no longer a threat.

  “Okay, you can relax about it now,” Bosch said.

  Foster’s shoulders were slumped and he looked wrung out. It was dawning on him, possibly for the first time, that he stood accused of the worst kind of crime.

  “I think I believe you, Da’Quan. That’s a good thing. What is bad is that your DNA was found in the victim and we need to explain that.”

  “It wadn’t mine.”

  “That’s just a denial and that doesn’t work as an explanation. The science is against you so far. The DNA makes this a slam-dunk case for the prosecution, Da’Quan. You’re a dead man walking unless we can explain it.”

  “I can’t explain it. I know it wasn’t from me. That’s it.”

  “Then how did it get there, Da’Quan?”

  “I don’t know! It’s like planted evidence.”

  “Planted by who?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “The cops?”

  “Somebody.”

  “Were you there that night? In this lady’s house?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Then where were you?”

  “At the studio. I was painting.”

  “No, you weren’t. That’s bullshit. The Sheriff’s Department has a witness. He says he went by the studio. You weren’t there.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Their witness is going to get on the stand at your trial and testify that he went to the studio to see you but you weren’t there. You add that to the DNA and you’re done. All over. You understand?”