“Make you feel any better, Harry?”
“A little bit.”
“Good. I’m going, then.”
“I’ll be here.”
After Rider left, Bosch jumped back into his review of the murder book. The third Investigator’s Summary focused on how the intruder got into the house. The door and window locks showed no signs of having been compromised and all known keys to the home were accounted for among family members and a housekeeper who was cleared of any suspicion. The investigators theorized that the killer came in through the garage, which had been left open, and then entered the house through the connecting door, which was usually not locked until after Robert Verloren came home from work at night.
According to Robert Verloren the garage was open when he came home from his restaurant about ten-thirty on the night of July fifth. The connecting door from the garage into the house was unlocked. He entered his home, closed the garage and locked the connecting door. The investigators theorized that by then the killer was already in the house.
The Verlorens’ explanation for the open garage was that their daughter had recently received her driver’s license and was on occasion allowed to use her mother’s car. However, she had not yet acquired the habit of remembering to close the garage door upon leaving or coming home, and had been chastised by her parents on more than one occasion for this. Late in the afternoon before her abduction Rebecca was sent on an errand by her mother to pick up dry cleaning. She used her mother’s car. The investigators confirmed that she picked up the clothing at 5:15 p.m. and then returned home. It was believed by the investigators that she once again forgot to close the garage or lock the connecting door after returning. Her mother said she never checked the garage that night, assuming wrongly that it was closed.
Two residents in the neighborhood canvassed after the murder reported seeing the garage door open that evening. This left the house easily accessible until Robert Verloren came home.
Bosch thought about how many times over the years he had seen someone’s seemingly innocent mistake turn into one of the keys to their own doom. A routine chore to pick up clothes may have led to the opportunity for a killer to get inside the house. Becky Verloren may have unwittingly engineered her own death.
Bosch pushed his chair back and stood up. He had finished the review of the first half of the murder book. He decided to get another cup of coffee before taking on the second half. He asked around in the office if anybody needed anything from the cafeteria and got one order for coffee from Jean Nord. He took the stairs down to the cafeteria and filled two cups from the urn, then paid for them and went over to the condiments counter to get Nord’s cream and sugar. While he was pouring a shot of cream into one of the cups he felt a presence next to him at the counter. He made room at the station but no one reached for any condiments. He turned toward the presence and found himself looking at the smiling face of Deputy Chief Irvin S. Irving.
There had never been any love lost between Bosch and Deputy Chief Irving. The chief had at various times been his adversary and unwitting savior in the department. But Bosch had heard from Rider that Irving was on the outs now. He had been unceremoniously pushed out of power by the new chief and given a virtually meaningless posting and assignment outside of Parker Center.
“I thought that was you, Detective Bosch. I’d buy you a cup of coffee but I see you already have more than enough. Would you like to sit down for a minute anyway?”
Bosch held up both cups of coffee.
“I’m kind of in the middle of something, Chief. And somebody’s waiting for one of these.”
“One minute, Detective,” Irving said, a stern tone entering his voice. “The coffee will still be hot when you get to where you have to go. I promise.”
Without waiting for an answer he turned and walked to a nearby table. Bosch followed. Irving still had a shaved and gleaming skull. His muscular jaw was his most prominent feature. He took a seat and held his posture ramrod straight. He didn’t look comfortable. He didn’t speak until Bosch sat down. The pleasant tone was back in his voice.
“All I wanted to do was welcome you back to the department,” he said.
He smiled like a shark. Bosch hesitated like a man stepping across a trapdoor before answering.
“It’s good to be back, Chief.”
“The Open-Unsolved Unit. I think that is the appropriate place for someone of your skills.”
Bosch took a sip from his scalding cup of coffee. He didn’t know if Irving had just complimented or insulted him. He wanted to leave.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said. “I hope so. I think I better -”
Irving held his hands out wide, as if to show he wasn’t hiding anything.
“That’s it,” he said. “You can go. I just wanted to say welcome back. And to thank you.”
Bosch hesitated, but then bit.
“Thank me for what, Chief?”
“For resurrecting me in this department.”
Bosch shook his head and smiled as if he didn’t understand.
“I don’t get it, Chief,” he said. “How am I supposed to do that? I mean, you’re across the street in the City Hall Annex now, right? What is it, the Office of Strategic Planning or something? From what I hear, you get to leave your gun at home.”
Irving folded his arms on the table and leaned in close to Bosch. All pretense of humor, false or otherwise, evaporated. He spoke strongly but quietly.
“Yes, that is where I am. But I guarantee you that it will not be for long. Not with the likes of you being welcomed back into the department.”
He then leaned back and just as quickly adopted a casual manner for what he delivered as casual conversation.
“You know what you are, Bosch? You are a retread. This new chief likes putting retreads on the car. But you know what happens with a retread? It comes apart at the seams. The friction and the heat-they’re too much for it. It comes apart and what happens? A blowout. And then the car goes off the road.”
He nodded silently as he let Bosch think about that.
“You see, Bosch, you are my ticket. You will fuck up-if you will excuse my language. It is in your history. It is in your nature. It is guaranteed. And when you fuck up, our illustrious new chief fucks up for being the one who put a cheap retread on our car.”
He smiled. Bosch thought that all he needed was a gold earring to complete the picture. Mr. Clean all the way.
“And when he goes down my stock goes right back up. I’m a patient man. I’ve waited for over forty years in this department. I can wait longer.”
Bosch expected more but that was it. Irving nodded once and stood up. He quickly turned and headed out of the cafeteria. Bosch felt the anger rise in his throat. He looked down at the two cups of coffee in his hands and felt like an idiot for having sat there like a defenseless errand boy while Irving had verbally punched him out. He got up and threw both cups into a trash can. He decided that when he got back to room 503 he would tell Jean Nord to get her own damn coffee.
6
WITH THE UNEASE of the Irving confrontation still lingering, Bosch took the second half of the murder book over to his desk and sat down. He thought the best way to forget about the threat that Irving posed was to immerse himself in the case again. What he found left in the file was a thick sheaf of ancillary reports and updates, the things investigators always lumped into the back of the book, the reports that Bosch called the tumblers because they often seemed disparate but nevertheless could unlock a case when seen from the right angle or put together in the right pattern.
First was a lab report stating that testing was unable to determine exactly how long the blood and tissue sample taken from the murder weapon could have been in the gun. The report said that while most of the sample
