The Overlook

EIGHTEEN

THE CAR JERKED FORWARD as Walling pulled out of the alley and into southbound traffic on Cahuenga.

“I’m taking you back to Queen of Angels so Dr. Garner can take a look at you,” she said. “Just hang in there for me, Bosch.”

He knew it was likely that the last-name endearments were about to come to an end. He pointed toward the left-turn lane that led onto Barham Boulevard.

“Never mind the hospital,” he said. “Take me back to the Kent house.”

“What?”

“I’ll get checked out later. Go to the Kent house. Here’s the turn. Go!”

She slipped into the left-turn lane.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m fine. I’m okay.”

“What are you telling me, that that little fainting spell back there was-”

“I had to get you away from the crime scene and away from Brenner so I could check this out and talk to you. Alone.”

“Check what out? Talk about what? Do you realize what you just did? I thought I was saving your life. Now Brenner or one of those other guys will take the credit for the recovery of the cesium. Thanks a lot, asshole. That was my crime scene.”

He opened his jacket and pulled out the rolled-up and folded yoga poster.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You can get the credit for the arrests. You just might not want it.”

He opened the poster, letting the top half flop over his knees. He was only interested in the bottom half.

“Dhanurasana,” he said.

Walling glanced over at him and then down at the poster.

“Would you start telling me what’s going on?”

“Alicia Kent practices yoga. I saw the mats in the workout room at the house.”

“I saw them, too. So what?”

“Did you see the sun discoloration on the wall where a picture or a calendar or maybe a poster had been taken down?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

Bosch held up the poster.

“I’m betting that we go in there and this will be a perfect fit. This is a poster Gonzalves found with the cesium.”

“And what will that mean?-if it’s a perfect fit.”

“It will mean that it was almost a perfect crime. Alicia Kent conspired to kill her husband and, if it hadn’t been for Digoberto Gonzalves just happening to find the tossed-out evidence, she would have gotten away with it.”

Walling shook her head dismissively.

“Come on, Harry. Are you saying she conspired with international terrorists to kill her husband in exchange for the cesium? I can’t believe I am even doing this. I need to get back to the crime scene.”

She started checking her mirrors, getting ready to make a U-turn. They were going up Lake Hollywood Drive now and would be at the house in two minutes.

“No, keep going. We’re almost there. Alicia Kent conspired with someone but it wasn’t a terrorist. The cesium being dumped in the trash proves that. You said it yourself, there is no way that Moby and El-Fayed would steal this stuff to just dump it. So what does that tell you? This wasn’t a heist. It actually was a murder. The cesium was just a red herring. Just like Ramin Samir. And Moby and El-Fayed? They were part of the misdirection as well. This poster will help prove it.”

“How?”

“Dhanurasana, the rocking bow.”

He held the poster up and over so she could glance at the yoga pose depicted in the bottom corner. It showed a woman with her arms behind her back, holding her ankles and creating a bow with the front of her body. She looked like she was hog-tied.

Walling glanced back at the curving road and then took another long look at the poster and the pose.

“We go into the house and see if this fits that space on the wall,” Bosch said. “If it fits, that means she and the killer took it off the wall because they didn’t want to risk that we might see it and connect it with what happened to her.”

“It’s a stretch, Harry. A huge one.”

“Not when you put it in context.”

“Which you, of course, can do.”

“As soon as we get to the house.”

“Hope you still have a key.”

“You bet I do.”

Walling turned onto Arrowhead Drive and punched the accelerator. But after a block she took her foot off, slowed down and shook her head again.

“This is ridiculous. She gave us the name Moby. There is no way she could have known he was in this country. And then up on the overlook, your own witness said that the shooter called out to Allah as he pulled the trigger. How can-”

“Let’s just try the poster on the wall. If it fits, I’ll lay the whole thing out for you. I promise. If it doesn’t fit, then I will quit-bothering you with it.”

She relented and drove the remaining block to the Kent house without another word. There was no longer a bureau car sitting out front. Bosch guessed that it was all hands on deck at the cesium recovery scene.

“Thank God I don’t have to deal with Maxwell again,” he said.

Walling didn’t even smile.

Bosch got out with the poster and his file containing the crime scene photos. He used Stanley Kent’s keys to open the front door and they proceeded to the workout room. They took positions on either side of the rectangular sun-discoloration mark and Bosch unrolled the poster. They each took a side and held the top corner of the poster to the top corner of the mark. Bosch put his other hand on the center of the poster and flattened it against the wall. The poster was a perfect fit over the mark on the wall. What was more was that the tape marks on the wall matched up with tape marks and old tape on the poster. To Bosch there was no doubt. The poster found by Digoberto Gonzalves in a Dumpster off Cahuenga had definitely come from Alicia Kent’s home yoga studio.

Rachel let go of her side of the poster and headed out of the room.

“I’ll be in the living room. I can’t wait to hear you put this together.”

Bosch rolled the poster up and followed. Walling took a seat in the same chair Bosch had put Maxwell in a few hours earlier. He remained standing in front of her.

“The fear was that the poster could be a tip-off,” he said. “Some smart agent or detective would see the rocking-bow pose and start thinking, This woman does yoga, maybe she could handle being hog-tied like that, maybe it was her idea, maybe she did it to help sell the misdirection. So they couldn’t take the chance. The poster had to go. It went into the Dumpster with the cesium, the gun and everything else they used. Except for the ski masks and the phony map they planted with the car at Ramin Samir’s house.”

“She’s a master criminal,” Walling said sarcastically.

Bosch was undeterred. He knew he’d convince her.

“If you get your people out there to check that line of Dumpsters, you’ll find the rest-the Coke-bottle silencer, the gloves, the first set of snap ties, every-”

“The first set of snap ties?”

“That’s right. I’ll get to that.”

Walling remained unimpressed.

“You better get to a lot of it. Because there are big gaps in this thing, man. What about the name Moby? What about the citing of Allah by the shooter? What-”

Bosch held up a hand.