There was something off about the conversation with Reineke. It was like they were missing each other.
“So how would that have worked?” Bosch asked. “He just came in and said he wanted some space to shoot?”
“Yeah, like that. Or he might’ve called first to make sure we weren’t booked up. Sometimes that happens.”
“Did he call?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Can we go back and look at the studio space?”
“Sure. We’re empty right now. I’ve got a three o’clock and then a four.”
They went around the counter and through a door into the loft space. There were three different photo setup areas with light stands and pull-down backgrounds. There were a few pieces of furniture to use as props. There were wires running across the ceiling and black curtains that would allow the different photo areas to be partitioned for privacy. Bosch saw the brick wall from the photos running the length of the space. He guessed that Stephen Jepson’s session on Friday had been with Lizbeth Grayson.
Bosch was staring at the wall when he remembered something that had been wrong about the conversation with Reineke. He turned and looked at the young script reader.
“Why did you ask if we were with Internal Affairs?”
Reineke stuck out his lower lip and shook his head as he looked over at the doorway and then back to the counter.
“Did I? I don’t know. I guess I was just wondering.”
“Why would you wonder if we were with Internal Affairs?”
Reineke did not look at him. The classic act of a liar.
“I don’t know. I was just guessing.”
“No, Louis, you were just lying. Why did you ask about IAD?”
“Look, man, I just was goofing. I was trying to think of something to ask.”
“Call the manager, Louis. Tell him he better get here for the three o’clock because you are going to the station with us. We’ll sit you down in a room for a while and when you’re finished
“No, man, I’ll lose my job here, man. I can’t go to the station now!”
Bosch made a move toward him.
“Let’s go.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you. I don’t owe the guy anything anyway.”
“What guy?”
Reineke shrugged off any further hesitation.
“The guys you asked about. They’re all one guy. He’s a cop.”
“A cop?” Bosch asked.
“I think so. He says he is. He takes photos for the police. All the crime scenes.”
“He told you this?”
“Yeah, he told me. He said that’s why he uses all the different names when he comes in. Because it’s like moonlighting and that’s not allowed. When you came in asking about all those names, I thought you were like Internal Affairs and you were onto him.”
Bosch looked over at Rider and then back at Reineke.
“Louis, call the manager. You still have to come to the station to look at photographs.”
“Ah, come on, man! I told you everything I know. I don’t even know the guy’s real name.”
“But you know his real face. Let’s go.”
Bosch took him by the arm and started to lead him toward the door to the counter. As they approached, Edgar stepped into the studio.
“About time,” Bosch said.
“Where’s the crime scene?” Edgar said.
“There is no crime scene,” Bosch said. “We’re taking Louis here back to the station to look at photos.”
“That’s weird.”
“What is?”
“I just passed Mark Baron, the crime scene guy, coming out of the elevator. He was in a hurry. I thought he was going to get his camera.”
They found police photographer Mark Baron in his apartment in West Hollywood. The door was unlocked and open two inches. Bosch called his name and then entered. Edgar and Rider were with him.
After overhearing Reineke tell Bosch and Edgar about the police photographer who used phony names to take Hollywood headshots of young women, Baron had rushed home, gone into the bedroom and gotten the gun he kept in a shoebox under his bed. He sat on the edge of the bed and put the muzzle into the fleshy spot under his chin. He pulled the trigger and blew the top of his head off.
Bosch didn’t look too long at the body of the dead photographer. Instead his eyes were drawn to the walls of the bedroom. Three of the four were covered floor to ceiling with collages of crime scene photos. All were of dead women. Next to each photo of death was a photo of life. The same woman alive and posing for him.
“Oh my God,” Rider murmured. “How long was he doing this?”
Bosch scanned the room and all of the photos of all of the different women. He didn’t want to guess.
“I better call this in to the captain,” Edgar said.
He left the room. Bosch continued to look. Finally, he found the headshot photo of Lizbeth Grayson on the wall. A photo of her lying dead on the bed was taped to the wall next to it.
Bosch wondered which of the photos Baron had prized the most. Dead or alive?
“I better call my office and tell them where I’m at,” Rider said.
Bosch nodded his approval. She left the room then and only Bosch remained.
“Do you still want to be a detective?” he asked, though he knew she was gone.
Cielo Azul
On the way up, the car’s air conditioner gave up shortly after Bakersfield. It was September and hot as I pushed through the middle of the state. Pretty soon I could feel my shirt start to stick to the vinyl seat. I pulled off my tie and unbuttoned my collar. I didn’t know why I had put a tie on in the first place. I wasn’t on the clock and I wasn’t going anywhere that required a tie.
I tried to ignore the heat and concentrate on how I would try to handle Seguin. But that was like the heat. I knew there was no way to handle him. Somehow it had always been the other way around. Seguin had the handle on me. One way or the other that would end on this trip.
I turned my wrist on the steering wheel and checked the date on my Timex. Exactly ten years since the day I had met Seguin. Since I had looked into the cold green eyes of the killer and known I was looking into the abyss.
The case began on Mulholland Drive, the winding snake of a road that follows the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains. A group of high schoolers had pulled off the road to drink their beer and look down upon the smoggy City of Dreams. One of them spotted the body. Nestled in the mountain brush and the debris of beer cans and tequila bottles tossed down by past revelers, the girl was nude, her arms and legs stretched outward in some sort of grotesque display of sex and murder.
The call came to me, Detective Harry Bosch, and my partner, Frankie Sheehan. At the time, we worked out of the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division.
The crime scene was treacherous. The body was snagged on an incline with a better than sixty-degree grade. One slip and a person could tumble all the way down the mountainside, maybe end up in somebody’s hot tub down below or on somebody’s concrete patio. We wore jumpsuits and leather harnesses and were lowered down to the body by firemen from the 58th Battalion.
The scene was clean. No clothes, no ID, no physical evidence, no clues but the dead girl. We didn’t even find
