“What I don’t understand is how it happened,” Brasher said. “A mistake like that, how could it kill her? And then the District Attorney’s Office today saying this man Stokes would not face any charge in the shooting. I’m a lawyer but I just don’t understand. They are letting him go.”
Bosch studied the older man, saw the misery in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, sir. I wish I could tell you. I have the same questions as you.”
Brasher nodded and looked into the grave.
“I’m going now,” he said after a long moment. “Thank you for coming, Detective Bosch.”
Bosch nodded. They shook hands again and Brasher started to walk away.
“Sir?” Bosch asked.
Brasher turned back.
“Do you know when someone from the family will be going to her house?”
“Actually, I was given her keys today. I was going to go now. Take a look at things. Try to get a sense of her, I guess. In recent years we hadn’t…”
He didn’t finish. Bosch stepped closer to him.
“There’s something that she had. A picture in a frame. If it’s not… if it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep it.”
Brasher nodded.
“Why don’t you come now? Meet me there. Show me this picture.”
Bosch looked at his watch. Lt. Billets had scheduled a one-thirty meeting to discuss the status of the case. He probably had just enough time to make it to Venice and back to the station. There would be no time for lunch but he couldn’t see himself eating anything anyway.
“Okay, I will.”
They parted and headed toward their cars. On the way Bosch stopped on the grass where the salute had been fired. Combing the grass with his foot, he looked until he saw the glint of brass and bent down to pick up one of the ejected rifle shells. He held it on his palm and looked at it for a few moments, then closed his hand and dropped it into his coat pocket. He had picked up a shell from every cop funeral he had ever attended. He had a jar full of them.
He turned and walked out of the cemetery.
Chapter 35
JERRY Edgar had a warrant knock that sounded like no other Bosch had ever heard. Like a gifted athlete who can focus the forces of his whole body into the swinging of a bat or the dunking of a basketball, Edgar could put his whole weight and six-foot-four frame into his knock. It was as though he could call down and concentrate all the power and fury of the righteous into the fist of his large left hand. He’d plant his feet firmly and stand sideways to the door. He’d raise his left arm, bend the elbow to less than thirty degrees and hit the door with the fleshy side of his fist. It was a backhand knock, but he was able to fire the pistons of this muscle assembly so quickly that it sounded like the staccato bark of a machine gun. What it sounded like was Judgment Day.
Samuel Delacroix’s aluminum-skinned trailer seemed to shudder from end to end when Edgar hit its door with his fist at 3:30 on Thursday afternoon. Edgar waited a few seconds and then hit it again, this time announcing “POLICE!” and then stepping back off the stoop, which was a stack of unconnected concrete blocks.
They waited. Neither had a weapon out but Bosch had his hand under his jacket and was gripping his gun in its holster. It was his standard procedure when delivering a warrant on a person not believed to be dangerous.
Bosch listened for movements from inside but the hiss from the nearby freeway was too loud. He checked the windows; none of the closed curtains were moving.
“You know,” Bosch whispered, “I’m starting to think it comes as a relief when you yell it’s just the cops after that knock. At least then they know it’s not an earthquake.”
Edgar didn’t respond. He probably knew it was just nervous banter from Bosch. It wasn’t anxiety about the door knock-Bosch fully expected Delacroix to be easy. He was anxious because he knew the case was all coming down to the next few hours with Delacroix. They would search the trailer and then have to make a decision, largely communicated in partners’ code, on whether to arrest Delacroix for his son’s murder. Somewhere in that process they would need to find the evidence or elicit the confession that would change a case largely built on theory into one built on lawyer-resistant fact.
So in Bosch’s mind they were quickly approaching the moment of truth, and that always made him nervous.
Earlier, in the case status meeting with Lt. Billets, it had been decided that it was time to talk to Sam Delacroix. He was the victim’s father, he was the chief suspect. What little evidence they had still pointed to him. They spent the next hour typing up a search warrant for Delacroix’s trailer and taking it to the downtown criminal courts building to a judge who was normally a soft touch.
But even this judge took some convincing. The problem was the case was old, the evidence directly linking the suspect was thin and the place Bosch and Edgar wanted to search was not where the homicide could have occurred and was not even occupied by the suspect at the time of the death.
What the detectives had in their favor was the emotional impact that came from the list in the warrant of all the injuries that the boy’s bones indicated he had sustained over his short life. In the end, it was all those fractures that won the judge over and he signed the warrant.
They had gone to the driving range first but were informed that Delacroix was finished driving the tractor for the day.
“Give him another shot,” Bosch told Edgar outside the trailer.
“I think I can hear him coming.”
“I don’t care. I want him rattled.”
Edgar stepped back up onto the stoop and hit the door again. The concrete blocks wobbled and he didn’t plant his feet firmly. The resulting knock didn’t carry the power and terror of the first two assaults on the door.
Edgar stepped back down.
“That wasn’t the police,” Bosch whispered. “That was a neighbor complaining about the dog or something.”
“Sorry, I-”
The door came open and Edgar shut up. Bosch went into high alert. Trailers were tricky. Unlike most structures, their doors opened outward so that the interior space didn’t have to accommodate the swing. Bosch was positioned on the blind side, so that whoever answered was looking at Edgar but couldn’t see Bosch. The problem was Bosch couldn’t see whoever had opened the door either. If there was trouble Edgar’s job was to yell a warning to Bosch and get himself clear. Without hesitation Bosch would empty his gun into the door of the trailer, the bullets tearing through the aluminum and whoever was on the other side like they were paper.
“What?” a man’s voice said.
Edgar held up his badge. Bosch studied his partner for any warning sign of trouble.
“Mr. Delacroix, police.”
Seeing no sign of alarm, Bosch stepped forward and grabbed the knob and pulled the door all the way open. He kept his jacket flipped back and his hand on the grip of his gun.
The man he had seen on the golf range the day before was standing there. He wore an old pair of plaid shorts and a washed-out maroon T-shirt with permanent stains under the arms.
“We have a warrant allowing us to search these premises,” Bosch said. “Can we come in?”
“You guys,” Delacroix said. “You guys were at the range yesterday.”
“Sir,” Bosch said forcefully, “I said that we have a search warrant for this trailer. Can we come in and conduct the search?”
Bosch took the folded warrant out of his pocket and held it up, but not within Delacroix’s reach. That was the trick. To get the warrant they had to show all their cards to a judge. But they didn’t want to show the same cards to Delacroix. Not just yet. So while Delacroix was entitled to read and study the warrant before granting the detectives entrance, Bosch was hoping to get inside the trailer without that happening. Delacroix would soon know the facts of the case, but Bosch wanted to control the delivery of information to him so that he could take readings
