themselves as detectives from RHD. There was only one chair in front of Kibble’s desk so they remained standing.
“Is it robbery or homicide we are talking about here?” Kibble asked.
“Homicide,” Rider said.
“Then why doesn’t one of you grab the extra chair from that cubicle over there. She’s still at lunch.”
Bosch took the chair she pointed at and brought it back. Rider and Bosch sat down and told Kibble they wanted a look at the file belonging to Roland Mackey. Bosch could tell that Kibble recognized the name but not the case.
“It was a lewd and lash probation you caught two years ago,” he said. “He cleared after twelve months.”
“Oh, he’s not current, then. Well, I need to go grab that one in archives. I don’t remem-oh, yes I do, yes I do. Roland Mackey, yeah. I rather enjoyed that one.”
“How so?” Rider asked.
Kibble smiled.
“Let’s just say he had some difficulty reporting to a woman of color. Tell you what, though, let me go grab the file so we get the details right.”
She double-checked the spelling of Mackey’s name with them and left the cubicle.
“That might help,” Bosch said.
“What?” Rider asked.
“If he had a problem with her he’ll probably have a problem with you. We might be able to use it.”
Rider nodded. Bosch saw she was looking at a newspaper article that was tacked to the fiberboard wall of the cubicle. It was yellowed with age. Bosch leaned closer to read it but he was too far away to read anything but the headline.
WOUNDED PAROLE OFFICER GETS HERO’S WELCOME
“What is it?” he asked Rider.
“I know who this is,” Rider said. “She got shot a few years ago. She went to some ex-con’s house and somebody shot her. The convict called for help but then split. Something like that. We gave her an award at the BPO. God, she’s lost a lot of weight.”
Something about the story rang a bell with Bosch, too. He noticed there were two photographs accompanying the story. One was of Thelma Kibble standing in front of the DOC building, a banner welcoming her back hanging from the roof. Rider was right. Kibble looked like she’d dropped eighty pounds since the photo. Bosch suddenly remembered seeing that banner across the front of the building a few years back while one of his cases was in trial at the courthouse across the street. He nodded. Now he remembered.
Then something about the second photo caught his eye and memory. It was a mug shot of a white woman-the ex-convict who lived in the house where Kibble had been shot.
“That’s not the shooter, right?” he asked.
“No, she’s the one who called it in, who saved her. She disappeared.”
Bosch suddenly stood up and leaned across the desk, putting his hands on stacks of files for support. He looked at the mug shot photo. It was a black-and-white shot that had darkened as the newspaper clipping had aged. But Bosch recognized the face in the photo. He was sure of it. The hair and eyes were different. The name underneath the photo was different, too. But he was sure he had encountered the woman in Las Vegas in the past year.
“Those are my files you’re messing up.”
Bosch immediately pulled himself back across the desk as Kibble came around it.
“Sorry about that. I was just trying to read the story.”
“That’s old news. Time I took that thing down. A lot of years and a lot of pounds ago.”
“I was at the Black Peace Officers meeting when you were honored,” Rider said.
“Oh, really?” Kibble said, her face breaking into a smile. “That was a really nice night for me.”
“Whatever happened to the woman?” Bosch asked.
“Cassie Black? Oh, she’s in the wind. Nobody’s seen her since.”
“She has charges?”
“The funny thing is, no. I mean, we violated her because she ran, but that’s all she’s got on her. Hell, she didn’t shoot me. All she did was save my life. I wasn’t going to have ’em charge her for it. But the parole violation I couldn’t do anything about. She split. Far as I know, the guy who shot me might’ve got her and buried her out in the desert somewhere. I hope not, though. She did me a good turn.”
Bosch was suddenly not so sure the woman he had temporarily lived next to in an airport motel while visiting his daughter in Las Vegas the year before had been Cassie Black. He sat down and didn’t say anything.
“So you found the file?” Rider said.
“Right here,” Kibble said. “You two can have at it. But if you want to ask me about the boy then do it now. My afternoon slate starts in five minutes. If I start late then I have a domino effect running through the whole damn day and I get outta here late. Can’t do that tonight. I gotta date.”
She was beaming at the prospect of her date.
“Okay, well, what do you remember about Mackey? Did you look at the file?”
“Yeah, I looked when I was coming back with it. Mackey was just a pissant weenie wagger. Small-time drug user who got racial religion somewhere along the way. He was no big thing. I rather enjoyed having him under my thumb. But that was about it.”
Rider had opened the file and Bosch was leaning toward her to look into it.
“The lewd and lash was an exposure case?” he asked.
“Actually, I think you’ll find in there that our boy got himself high on speed and alcohol-a lot of alcohol-and he decided to relieve himself in somebody’s front yard. A thirteen-year-old girl happened to live there and she happened to be out front shooting baskets. Mr. Mackey decided upon seeing the girl that since he already had his little pud out and about in the wind that he might as well go ahead and ask the girl if she wanted to partake of it. Did I mention that the girl’s father was LAPD Metro Division and happened to be off-duty and home at the time of this incident? He stepped outside and put Mr. Mackey on the ground. In fact, Mr. Mackey later complained that coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally he had been put on the ground right on top of the puddle he had just made. He was rather unhappy about that.”
Kibble smiled at the story. Bosch nodded. Her version was more colorful than the case summary in the file.
“And he just pleaded out.”
“That’s right. He got a probation deal and took it. He came to me.”
“Any problems during his twelve months?”
“Nothing other than his problem with me. He asked for another agent and it got turned down and he got stuck with me. He kept it in check but it was there. Underneath, you know? Couldn’t ever tell which bugged his ass more, me being black or me being a woman.”
She looked at Rider as she said this last part and Rider nodded.
The file contained details of Mackey’s past crimes and life. It had photos taken during earlier arrests. It would become the baseline resource on their target. There was too much in it to go through in front of Kibble.
“Can we get this copied?” Bosch asked. “We’d also like to borrow one of these early photos if we could.”
Kibble’s eyes narrowed for a moment.
“You two working an old case, huh?”
Rider nodded.
“From way back,” she said.
“Like a cold case, huh?”
“We call it open-unsolved,” Rider said.
Kibble nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, nothing surprises me in this place-I’ve seen people shoplift a frozen pizza and get popped two days before the end of a four-year tail. But from what I remember of this guy Mackey, he didn’t seem to me to have the killer instinct. Not if you ask me. He’s a follower, not a doer.”
“That’s a good read,” Bosch said. “We’re not sure he is the one. We just know he was involved.”
He stood up, ready to go.
“What about the photo?” he asked. “A photocopy won’t be clear enough to show.”
