phone and called it. He never heard it ring. He just got the loud screeching sound of a computer hookup. It was so loud that even Rider heard it.
“What is that?”
Bosch hung up.
“I’m trying to run down that note I saw on the desk in the station about Visa calling to confirm Mackey’s employment. Remember you said it didn’t fit?”
“I forgot about that. Was that the number?”
“I don’t know. There are four listings for Visa but-wait a minute.”
He realized that the Visa calls were outgoing calls.
“Never mind, these were outgoing. It must be the number the machine calls when you use a credit card to pay. That’s not it. There is no incoming call listed as Visa.”
Bosch picked up the phone again and called Nord’s cell phone.
“Are you at the service station yet?”
She laughed.
“We’ve barely cleared Hollywood. We’ll be there in a half hour.”
“Ask them about a phone message somebody left for Mackey yesterday. Something about Visa calling to confirm employment on a credit application. Ask them what they remember from the call and more importantly, what time it came in. Try to get the exact time if you can. Ask them about this first thing and then call me back.”
“Yes, sir. You want us to pick up your laundry, too?”
Bosch realized it was getting to be a bad morning for stepping on toes.
“Sorry,” he said. “We’re working under the gun here.”
“Aren’t we all? I’ll call you as soon as we see the guy.”
Nord hung up. Bosch put the phone down and looked at Rider. She was looking at the class picture of Rebecca Verloren in the yearbook they had borrowed.
“What are you thinking?” she asked without looking up at Bosch.
“This thing with Visa bothers me.”
“I know, so what are you thinking?”
“Well, say you’re the killer and you got the gun you did it with from Mackey.”
“You’re completely giving up on Burkhart? You sure liked him last night.”
“Let’s just say the facts are persuading me. For now, okay?”
“Okay, go on.”
“All right, so you’re the killer and you got the gun from Mackey. He’s the one person in the world who can put the thing on you. But seventeen years go by and nothing ever happens and you feel safe and maybe you even lose track of Mackey.”
“Okay.”
“And then yesterday you pick up the paper and you see the picture of Rebecca and you read the story and it says they’ve got DNA. You know it wasn’t your blood, so it was either a big bluff by the cops or it’s got to be Mackey’s blood. So that’s when you know.”
“Mackey’s gotta go.”
“Exactly. The cops are getting close. He’s got to go. So how do you find him? Well, Mackey’s spent his entire life-when he isn’t in jail-driving a tow truck. If you knew that then you’d do exactly what we did. You get out the yellow pages and start calling tow companies.”
Rider stood up and went to the bank of file cabinets along the alcove’s back wall. The phone books were stacked haphazardly on top. She had to stand on her toes to reach the yellow pages for the Valley. She came back and opened the book to the pages advertising tow services. She ran her finger down a listing until she reached Tampa Towing, where Mackey had worked. She backed up to the previous listing, a company called Tall Order Towing Services. She picked up her phone and dialed the number. Bosch heard only her side of the conversation.
“Yes, who am I speaking with?”
She waited a moment.
“My name is Detective Kizmin Rider with the Los Angeles Police Department. I am investigating a fraud case and wondered if I could ask you a question.”
Rider nodded as she apparently got a go-ahead.
“The suspect I am documenting has a history of calling businesses and identifying himself as someone working for Visa. He then attempts to verify someone else’s employment as part of an application for a credit card. Does any of this ring a bell with you? We have information that leads us to believe that this individual was operating in the Valley yesterday. He likes to target automotive businesses.”
Rider waited while there was a response to her question. She looked at Bosch but gave no indication of anything.
“Yes, could you put her on the line, please?”
Rider went through the whole thing again with another person and asked the same question. Then she leaned forward and seemed to take a stiffer attitude in her posture. She covered the mouthpiece and looked at Bosch.
“Bingo,” she said.
She then went back to the phone call and listened some more.
“Was it a male or female?”
She wrote something down.
“And what time was this?”
She wrote another note and Bosch stood up so he could look across his desk to read it. She had written “male, 1:30 approx” on a scratch pad. While she continued the conversation Bosch consulted the pen register and saw that a call came in on the Tampa Towing line at 1:40 p.m. It was from a personal number. The name on the register was Amanda Sobek. The number’s prefix indicated it was a cell phone. Neither the name nor the number meant anything to Bosch. But that didn’t matter. He thought they were getting close to something here.
Rider finished her call by asking if the person she was talking to remembered the name the supposed Visa employee had tried to confirm. After she apparently got a negative reply, she asked, “What about the name Roland Mackey?”
She waited.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Okay, thank you for your time, Karen.”
She hung up and looked at Bosch. The excitement in her eyes wiped out everything about being left out of the morning’s fingerprints find.
“You were right,” she said. “They got a call. Same thing. She even remembered the name Roland Mackey once I gave it to her. Harry, somebody was tracking him down the whole time we were watching him.”
“And now we’re going to track them down. If they were going down the line in the phone book they would have called Tampa Towing next. The register shows a one-forty call from somebody named Amanda Sobek. I don’t recognize it but this might be the call we’re looking for.”
“Amanda Sobek,” Rider said as she opened her laptop. “Let’s see what AutoTrack has on her.”
While she was tracing the name, Bosch got a call from Robinson, who had arrived with Nord at Tampa Towing.
“Harry, the dayshift guy says that call came in between one-thirty and two o’clock. He knows because he had just come back from lunch and he was sent out on a tow at two o’clock. A Triple A run.”
“Was it a male or female caller from Visa?”
“Male.”
“Okay, anything else?”
“Yeah, once this guy confirmed that Mackey worked here, the Visa guy asked what hours he worked.”
“Okay. Can you ask the day man another question?”
“He’s right here.”
“Ask if they have a customer named Sobek. Amanda Sobek.”
Bosch waited while the question was asked.
“No customer named Sobek,” Robinson reported back. “Is that good news, Harry?”
