you? Why’d you need a stun gun if you went in there to kill yourself?”
Stoddard was silent. It was almost as if after seventeen years he had been able to erase the Professional 100 from his memory.
“We got first degree and we got lying in wait,” Bosch said. “You’re going down for the whole ride, Stoddard. You were never going to kill yourself. Back then, or even today.”
“I think I want a lawyer now,” Stoddard said.
“Yeah, of course you do.”
Bosch left the room and walked down the hallway to an open door. It was the monitoring room. The lieutenant and one of the patrol officers from the ride in were in the small space. There were two active video screens. On one Bosch saw Stoddard sitting in the interview room. The camera angle was from an upper corner of the room. Stoddard seemed to be staring blankly at the wall.
The image on the other screen was frozen. It showed Bosch and Stoddard in the backseat of the patrol car.
“How’s the sound?” Bosch asked.
“Beautiful,” the lieutenant said. “We got it all. Taking off the cuffs was a nice touch. Brought his face up into the camera.”
The lieutenant hit a switch and the picture started moving. Bosch could hear Stoddard’s voice clearly. He nodded. The patrol car had been equipped with a dashboard camera used for filming traffic stops and prisoner transports. For the ride in with Stoddard the car’s interior microphone was turned on and the exterior was cut off.
It had worked perfectly. Stoddard’s admissions in the backseat would help seal the case. Bosch felt no worries from that direction at all. He thanked the lieutenant and the patrolman and asked if he could borrow a desk to make some calls.
Bosch called Abel Pratt to update him and to assure him that Rider was shaken up but otherwise okay. He told Pratt that he needed to get SID teams to both Stoddard’s and Muriel Verloren’s homes to process crime scenes. He said a search warrant should be applied for and approved before the SID team entered Stoddard’s house. He said that Stoddard was about to be booked and his fingerprints taken. The prints would need to be compared to those found on the slat from beneath Rebecca Verloren’s bed. He finished by telling Pratt about the video taken during the ride to the station and the admissions Stoddard had made.
“It’s all solid and it’s on tape,” Bosch said. “It all came after Miranda.”
“Good going, Harry,” Pratt said. “I don’t think we’ll have anything to worry about on this.”
“Not with the case, at least.”
Meaning that Stoddard was going to go down without a problem, but Bosch wasn’t sure how he would fare in the review of his handling of the case.
“It’s tough to argue with results,” Pratt said.
“We’ll see.”
Bosch started getting a call-waiting signal on his phone. He told Pratt he had to go and clicked over to the new call. It was McKenzie Ward from the
“My sister was listening to the scanner in the photo shop,” she said urgently. “She said a backup unit and an ambulance were sent to the Verloren house. She recognized the address.”
“That’s right.”
“What’s going on, Detective? We had a deal, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember. And I was just about to call you.”
42
THE KITCHEN at the Metro Shelter was dark. Bosch went to the small lobby of the adjoining hotel and spoke to the man behind the glass window. He asked for Robert Verloren’s room number.
“He’s gone, man.”
Something about the finality in his tone put a hollow into Bosch’s chest. It didn’t sound like he meant Verloren had gone out for the night.
“What do you mean gone?”
“I mean gone. He did his thing and he’s gone. That’s it.”
Bosch took a step closer to the glass. The man had a paperback novel open on the counter and had not looked up from its yellowed pages.
“Hey, look at me.”
The man flipped the book over to not lose his page and looked up. Bosch showed him his badge. He then glanced down and saw the book was called
“Yes, Officer.”
Bosch looked back up at the man’s tired eyes.
“What do you mean,
The man shrugged.
“He came in drunk and that’s the one rule we got around here. No drinking. No drunks.”
“He was fired?”
The man nodded.
“What about his room?”
“Room came with the job. Like I said, he’s gone.”
“Where?”
The man shrugged one more time. He pointed to the door that led to the sidewalk on Fifth Street. He was telling Bosch that Verloren was out there somewhere.
“It happens,” the man said.
Bosch looked back at him.
“When did he go?”
“Yesterday. It was you cops who did it to him, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard some cop came in here, told him some shit. I don’t know what it was about, but that was right before-know what I’m saying? He got off work and went out and took the taste again. And that was that. All I know is, we need a new chef now ’cause the guy they got fillin’ in can’t make eggs for shit.”
Bosch said nothing else to the man. He stepped away from the window and went to the door. Outside the shelter the street was teeming with people. The night people. The damaged and displaced. People hiding from others and hiding from themselves. People running from the past, from the things they did and the things they didn’t do.
Bosch knew the story was going to hit the news in the morning. He had wanted to tell it to Robert Verloren himself.
Bosch decided he would look for Robert Verloren out there. He didn’t know what the news he would bring would do for him. He didn’t know if it would bring Verloren out or push him further into the hole. Maybe nothing could help him now. But he needed to tell him anyway. The world was full of people who could not get over things. There was no closure and there was no peace. The truth did not set you free. But you could get through things. That’s what Bosch would tell him. You could head toward the light and climb and dig and fight your way out of the hole.
Bosch pushed open the door and headed out into the night.
43
THE POLICE ACADEMY parade field was nestled like a green blanket against one of the wooded hills of Elysian
