“Anyway,” Harrod said, shaking off the memory. “I better wash up, Harry. My wife’s making pasta tonight.”
“Sounds good, Gary. Thanks for your help.”
“What help?”
“You helped. Let me know if you think of anything else.”
“You got it.”
Bosch hung up and tried to think if he knew anybody who would have worked in Devonshire twenty years ago. Back then it was the quietest yet geographically largest police division, covering the entire northwest corner of the city in the San Fernando Valley. It was known as Club Dev because the station was new and the workload light.
Bosch realized that Larry Gandle, a former Open-Unsolved Unit lieutenant, had spent time in Devonshire in the nineties and might know who the Danish-speaking patrol officer was. Bosch called Gandle’s office. He was now the captain in charge of RHD.
Bosch’s call was put through without delay. Harry explained what and who he was looking for, and Gandle gave him the bad news.
“Yeah, you’re talking about Magnus Vestergaard, but he’s dead at least ten years now. Motorcycle accident.”
“Damn.”
“What did you need him for?”
“He did some Danish translation work on a case I’m looking at. I wanted to see what he remembered that’s not in the book.”
“Sorry about that, Harry.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
As soon as Bosch put down the phone, it rang while still in his hand. It was Lieutenant O’Toole.
“Detective, can you come into my office for a moment?”
“Sure thing.”
Bosch killed his computer screen and got up. A summons to O’Toole’s office was not a good thing. He felt several eyes in the squad room following him as he made his way to the corner office. It was bright inside. The blinds over the windows that looked out on the squad were open as well as the exterior windows that had a view of the Los Angeles Times Building. The previous lieutenant always kept these closed out of fear that the reporters were watching.
“What’s up, L-T?” Bosch asked.
“I’ve got something I want you to run with.”
“What do you mean?”
“A case. I got a call from an analyst named Pran in the Death Squad. He linked an open case from ’oh-six with a case from ’ninety-nine. I want you to handle it. It sounded good. Here’s his direct.”
O’Toole proffered a yellow Post-it with a phone number jotted on it. The Death Squad was the unofficial acronym of the new Data Evaluation and Theory Unit. It was part of a new form of cold case investigating called data synthesizing.
For the prior three years, the Death Squad had been digitizing archived murder books, creating a massive database of easily accessible and comparable information about unsolved killings. Suspects, witnesses, weapons, locations, word constructions—any and all of the myriad details of crime scenes and investigations—were constantly churning through the squad’s telephone booth–size IBM computer. It had provided a whole new line of investigation of cold cases.
Bosch didn’t reach out for the Post-it but his curiosity got the better of him.
“What’s the connection between the cases?”
“A witness. Same witness happened to see the shooter running away. Two contract hits, one in the Valley, one downtown, no seeming connection but the same witness both times. Sounds to me like this witness needs to be looked at from a whole new angle. Take the number.”
Bosch didn’t.
“What going on, Lieutenant? I’ve got momentum going on the Jespersen case. Why are you giving me this?”
“You told me yesterday that Jespersen was stalled.”
“I didn’t say it was stalled. I said it wasn’t a CBO case.”
Bosch suddenly realized what was going on. Something Jordy Gant had said connected with what O’Toole was trying to do. Plus he knew that the afternoon before, O’Toole had attended the weekly command staff meeting on the tenth floor. He turned and headed out of the office.
“Harry, don’t walk out, where are you going?”
Bosch spoke without turning back to look.
“Give it to Jackson. He needs a case.”
“I’m giving it to you. Hey!”
Bosch strode down the center aisle and out the door to the elevator lobby. O’Toole didn’t follow him, and that was a good thing. The two things Bosch had the least patience for were politics and bureaucracy. And he believed O’Toole was engaged in both—but not necessarily by his own choice.
He rode the elevator to the tenth floor and then strode through the open door of the chief of police’s suite. There were four desks in the front room. Uniformed officers sat behind three of them. Behind the fourth was Alta Rose, who was arguably the most powerful civilian working in the police department. She had been guarding the entrance to the chief of police’s office for nearly three decades. She was part pit bull and part sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Anybody who dismissed her as simply a secretary was mistaken. She kept the chief’s schedule and more often than not told him where to be and when.
Bosch had been summoned to the chief’s office enough times over the years that Rose recognized him on sight. She smiled sweetly at him as he approached her desk.
“Detective Bosch, how are you?” she asked.
“I’m fine, Ms. Rose. How are things up here?”
“I’m not sure they could be any better. But I am sorry, I don’t have you on the chief’s calendar today. Have I made a mistake?”
“No, no mistake, Ms. Rose. I was just hoping to see if Marty—I mean, if the chief—has five minutes for me.”
Her eyes flitted down for a moment to the multiple-line telephone on her desk. One of the line buttons was glowing red.
“Oh, dear, he’s on a call.”
But Bosch knew that line was always lit, just so Alta Rose could turn people away if need be. Harry’s former partner Kiz Rider had spent time working in the chief’s office and had told Bosch the secret.
“He also has an evening appointment he’s going to have to leave for as soon as—”
“Three minutes, Ms. Rose. Just ask him. I think he’s probably even expecting me.”
Alta Rose frowned but got up from her desk and disappeared behind the big door to the inner sanctum. Bosch stood waiting.
Chief Martin Maycock had come up through the ranks. Twenty-five years before, he had been an RHD detective assigned to Homicide Special. So was Bosch. They had never partnered but they had worked task-force cases together, most notably on the Dollmaker investigation, which ended when Bosch shot the infamous serial killer to death in his Silver Lake kill pad. Maycock was handsome and more than competent, and he had a name that was easily if awkwardly remembered. He used the media attention and celebrity from those big cases to launch his rise through the command structure of the department, culminating in his appointment by the police commission as chief.
The rank and file was at first buoyed by the elevation of a homegrown badge to the tenth floor. But three years into his appointment, the honeymoon was over. Maycock presided over a department crippled by a hiring freeze, a devastating budget crunch, and the various and sundry scandals that came along every few months. Crime had plummeted but it wasn’t garnering him any credit or political traction. Worse than that was that the rank and file had begun to view him as a politician more interested in getting on the six-o’clock news than showing up at roll
