“And what about Howard Elias?”
“He a regular, too. Two, three times a week, all different times, sometimes late like last night. One time I was locking up and he was down there callin’ up to me. I made a ’ception. I brought him up on Sinai. I was bein’ nice. At Christmastime he gave me a little envelope. He was a nice man, ’membering me like that.”
“Was he always alone when he rode the train?”
The old man folded his arms and thought about this for a moment.
“Mostly, I think.”
“You remember him ever being with somebody else?”
“I think one or two times I remember him bein’ with somebody. I can’t rightly remember who it was.”
“Was it a man or woman?”
“I don’t know. I think it mighta been a lady but I’m not gettin’ a picture, know what I mean?”
Bosch nodded and thought about things. He looked at Rider and raised his eyebrows. She shook her head. She had nothing more to ask.
“Before you go, Mr. Peete, can you turn everything on and let us ride down?”
“Sure. Whatever you and Miss Kizmin need.”
He looked at Rider and bowed his head with a smile.
“Thank you,” Bosch said. “Then let’s do it.”
Peete moved to the computer keyboard and began typing in a command. Immediately the floor began to vibrate and there was a low-pitched grinding sound. Peete turned to them.
“Anytime,” he said above the din. Bosch waved and headed out to the train car. Chastain and Baker, the IAD man who had been paired with Kizmin Rider, were standing at the guardrail, looking down the track.
“We’re going down,” Bosch called over. “You guys coming?”
Without a word they fell in behind Rider and the four detectives stepped onto the train car called Olivet. The bodies had long been removed and the evidence technicians cleared out. But the spilt blood was still on the wood floor and the bench where Catalina Perez had sat. Bosch moved down the steps, careful to avoid stepping in the maroon pool that had leaked from Howard Elias’s body. He took a seat on the right side. The others sat on benches further up the train, away from where the bodies had fallen. Bosch looked up at the station house window and waved. Immediately the car jerked and began its descent. And immediately Bosch again recalled riding the train as a kid. The seat was just as uncomfortable as he remembered it.
Bosch didn’t look at the others as they rode. He kept looking out the lower door and at the track as it went underneath the car. The ride lasted no longer than a minute. At the bottom he was the first off. He turned and looked back up the tracks. He could see Peete’s head silhouetted in the station house window by the overhead light inside.
Bosch did not push through the turnstile, as he could see black fingerprint powder on it and didn’t want to get it on his suit. The department did not consider the powder a hazard of the job and would not repay a dry cleaning bill if he got it on himself. He pointed the powder out to the others and climbed over the turnstile.
He scanned the ground on the off chance something would catch his eye but there was nothing unusual. He was confident that the area had already been gone over by the RHD detectives anyway. Bosch had primarily come down to get a firsthand look and feel for the place. To the left of the archway was a concrete staircase for when the train wasn’t running or for those who were afraid to ride the inclined railroad. The stairs were also popular with weekend fitness enthusiasts, who ran up and down them. Bosch had read a story about it a year or so back in the Times. Next to the stairs a lighted bus stop had been cut into the steep hill. There was a fiberglass sunshade over a double-length bench. The side partitions were used to advertise films. On the one Bosch could see there was an ad for an Eastwood picture called Blood Work. The movie was based on a true story about a former FBI agent Bosch was acquainted with.
Bosch thought about whether the gunman could have waited in the bus shelter for Elias to walk up to the Angels Flight turnstile. He decided against it. The shelter was lit by an overhead light. Elias would have had a good view of whoever sat in there as he approached the train. Since Bosch thought it was likely that Elias knew his killer, he didn’t think the shooter would have waited out in the open like that.
He looked at the other side of the archway where there was a heavily landscaped ten-yard strip between the train entrance and a small office building. Bushes crowded thickly around an acacia tree. Bosch wished he hadn’t left his briefcase up in the station house.
“Anybody bring a flashlight?” he asked.
Rider reached into her purse and brought out a small penlight. Bosch took it and headed into the bushes, putting the light on the ground and studying his pathway in. He found no obvious sign that the killer had waited in here. There was trash and other debris scattered in behind the bushes but none of it appeared to be fresh. It looked like a place where homeless people had stopped to look through trash bags they had picked up from somewhere else.
Rider made her way into the bushes.
“Find anything?”
“Nothing good. I’m just trying to figure out where this guy would have hidden from Elias. This could have been as good a spot as any. Elias wouldn’t see him, he’d come out after Elias walked by, move up behind him at the train car.”
“Maybe he didn’t need to hide. Maybe they walked here together.”
Bosch looked at her and nodded.
“Maybe. As good as anything I’m coming up with in here.”
“What about the bus bench?”
“Too open, too well lighted. If it was someone Elias had reason to fear, he’d’ve seen him.”
“What about a disguise? He could have sat in the bus stop in a disguise.”
“There’s that.”
“You’ve already considered all of this but you let me go on talking, saying things you already know.”
He didn’t say anything. He handed the flashlight back to Rider and headed out of the bushes. He looked over at the bus stop once more and felt sure he was right in his thinking. The bus stop hadn’t been used. Rider came up next to him and followed his gaze.
“Hey, did you know Terry McCaleb over at the bureau?” she asked.
“Yeah, we worked a case once. Why, you know him?”
“Not really. But I’ve seen him on TV. He doesn’t look like Clint Eastwood, if you ask me.”
“Yeah, not really.”
Bosch saw Chastain and Baker had crossed the street and were standing in the hollow created by the closed roll-up doors at the entrance of the huge Grand Central Market. They were looking at something on the ground.
Bosch and Rider walked over.
“Got something?” Rider asked.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Chastain said.
He pointed to the dirty, worn tiles at his feet.
“Cigarette butts,” Baker said. “Five of them – same brand. Means somebody was waiting here a while.”
“Could have been a homeless,” Rider said.
“Maybe,” Baker replied. “Could’ve been our shooter.”
Bosch wasn’t that impressed.
“Any of you smokers?” he asked.
“Why?” Baker asked.
“Because then you’d see what this probably is. What is it you see when you go in the front doors at Parker Center?”
Chastain and Baker looked puzzled.
“Cops?” Baker tried.
“Yeah, but cops doing what?”
“Smoking,” Rider said.
“Right. No smoking in public buildings anymore, so the smokers gather round the front doors. This market is a public facility.”
