way. Get the guy’s keys in case we need to go in. And I’ll go get my car.”
Walling started to move away but Bosch caught her by the arm.
“I’m driving,” he said.
He pointed toward his Mustang and left her there. He headed to the patrol car, where the evidence bags were still spread on the trunk. As he made his way he regretted having already cut Edgar loose from the scene. He signaled the watch sergeant over.
“Listen, I have to leave the scene to check on the victim’s house. I shouldn’t be gone long and Detective Ferras should be here any minute. Just maintain the scene until one of us gets here.”
“You got it.”
Bosch pulled out his cell phone and called his partner.
“Where are you?”
“I just cleared Parker Center. I’m twenty minutes away.”
Bosch explained that he was leaving the scene and that Ferras needed to hurry. He disconnected, grabbed the evidence bag containing the key ring off the cruiser’s trunk and shoved it into his coat pocket.
As he got to his car he saw Walling already in the passenger seat. She was finishing a call and closing her cell phone.
“Who was that?” Bosch asked after getting in. “The president?”
“My partner,” she replied. “I told him to meet me at the house. Where’s your partner?”
“He’s coming.”
Bosch started the car. As soon as they pulled out he began asking questions.
“If Stanley Kent wasn’t a terrorist, then what list was he on?”
“As a medical physicist he had direct access to radioactive materials. That put him on a list.”
Bosch thought of all the hospital name tags he had found in the dead man’s Porsche.
“Access where? In the hospitals?”
“Exactly. That’s where it’s kept. These are materials primarily used in the treatment of cancer.”
Bosch nodded. He was getting the picture but still didn’t have enough information.
“Okay, so what am I missing here, Rachel? Lay it out for me.”
“ Stanley Kent had direct access to materials that some people in the world would like to get their hands on. Materials that could be very, very valuable to these other people. But not in the treatment of cancer.”
“Terrorists.”
“Exactly.”
“Are you saying that this guy could just waltz into a hospital and get this stuff? Aren’t there regulations?”
Walling nodded.
“There are always regulations, Harry. But just having them is not always enough. Repetition, routine-these are the cracks in any security system. We used to leave the cockpit doors on commercial airlines unlocked. Now we don’t. It takes an event of life-altering consequences to change procedures and strengthen precautions. Do you understand what I am saying?”
He thought of the notations on the back of some of the ID cards in the victim’s Porsche. Could Stanley Kent have been so lax about the security of these materials that he wrote access combinations on the back of his ID cards? Bosch’s instincts told him the answer was probably yes.
“I understand,” he told Walling.
“So, then, if you were going to circumvent an existing security system, no matter how strong or weak, who would you go to?” she asked.
Bosch nodded.
“Somebody with intimate knowledge of that security system.”
“Exactly.”
Bosch turned onto Arrowhead Drive and started looking at address numbers on the curb.
“So you’re saying this could be an event of life-altering consequences?”
“No, I’m not saying that. Not yet.”
“Did you know Kent?”
Bosch looked at Walling as he asked and she looked surprised by the question. It had been a long shot but he threw it out there for the reaction, not necessarily the answer. Walling turned from him and looked out her window before answering. Bosch knew the move. A classic tell. He knew she would now lie to him.
“No, I never met the man.”
Bosch pulled into the next driveway and stopped the car.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“This is it. It’s Kent ’s house.”
They were in front of a house that had no lights on inside or out. It looked like no one lived there.
“No, it isn’t,” Walling said. “His house is down another block and-”
She stopped when she realized Bosch had smoked her out. Bosch stared at her for a moment in the dark car before speaking.
“You want to level with me now or do you want to get out of the car?”
“Look, Harry, I told you. There are things I can’t-”
“Get out of the car, Agent Walling. I’ll handle this myself.”
“Look, you have to under-”
“This is a homicide.
She didn’t move.
“I can make one phone call and you’d be removed from this investigation before you got back to the scene,” she said.
“Then do it. I’d rather be kicked to the curb right now than be a mushroom for the feds. Isn’t that one of the bureau’s slogans? Keep the locals in the dark and bury them in cow shit? Well, not me, not tonight and not on my own case.”
He started to reach across her lap to open her door. Walling pushed him back and raised her hands in surrender.
“All right, all right,” she said. “What is it you want to know?”
“I want the truth this time. All of it.”
THREE
BOSCH TURNED IN HIS SEAT TO LOOK directly at Walling. He was not going to move the car until she started talking.
“You obviously knew who Stanley Kent was and where he lived,” he said. “You lied to me. Now, was he a terrorist or not?”
“I told you, no, and that is the truth. He was a citizen. He was a physicist. He was on a watch list because he handled radioactive sources which could be used-in the wrong hands-to harm members of the public.”
“What are you talking about? How would this happen?”
“Through exposure. And that could take many different forms. Individual assault-you remember last Thanksgiving the Russian who was dosed with polonium in London? That was a specific target attack, though there were ancillary victims as well. The material Kent had access to could also be used on a larger scale-a mall, a subway, whatever. It all depends on the quantity and, of course, the delivery device.”
“Delivery device? Are you talking about a bomb? Somebody could make a dirty bomb with the stuff he handled?”
“In some applications, yes.”
“I thought that was an urban legend, that there’s never actually been a dirty bomb.”
“The official designation is IED-improvised explosive device. And put it this way, it’s only an urban legend until precisely the moment that the first one is detonated.”
Bosch nodded and got back on track. He gestured to the house in front of them.
