lights in the canyon and down on the freeway sharper and clearer. Cold nights always made Bosch feel lonely. The chill worked its way into his backbone and held there, made him think about things he had lost over time.
He turned and looked in through the glass at his daughter on the couch. He watched her finish the book she was reading. He watched her cry when she got to the last page.
13
Bosch was in the parking lot in front of the Regional Crime Lab by six o’clock Thursday. Dawn’s light was just bleeding into the sky over East L.A. The Cal State campus surrounding the building was quiet this early. Bosch took a parking space that allowed him to view all the lab workers as they parked and headed toward the building. He sipped a coffee and waited.
At 6:25 he saw the person he wanted. He left his coffee behind, got out with the gun package under his arm, and moved between cars and across lanes to head off his quarry. He got to him before the man got to the entrance of the stone-and-glass building.
“Pistol Pete, just the guy I was hoping to run into. I’m even going to the third floor.”
Bosch reached the door and held it open for Peter Sargent. He was a veteran examiner in the lab’s Firearm Analysis Unit. They had worked several cases together in the past.
Sargent used a key card to get through the electronic gate. Bosch held his badge up to the security officer behind the desk and followed Sargent through. He then followed him into the elevator.
“What’s up, Harry? It kind of looked like you were waiting for me out there.”
Bosch gave an aw-shucks-you-got-me smile and nodded.
“Yeah, I guess I was. Because you’re the guy I need on this. I need Pistol Pete.”
The
“What’s the case?” Sargent asked.
“A twenty-year-old murder. Yesterday we finally recovered what we’re pretty sure is the murder weapon. I need the bullet match done but I also need to see if we can raise the serial number. That’s the key thing. We get that number, and I think it leads us to the suspect. We solve the case.”
“That simple, huh?”
He reached for the package as the elevator doors opened on three.
“Well, we both know nothing is that simple. But the case has got some mojo going and I don’t want to slow it down.”
“Was the number filed or acid burned?”
They were walking down the hall toward the double-door entrance to the Firearms Unit.
“Looks to me like it was filed down. But you can raise it, right?”
“Some of the time we can—at least partially. But you know the process takes four hours, right? A half day. And you know that we’re supposed to take these in line. The wait’s running five weeks, no cutting in line.”
Bosch was ready for that.
“I’m not asking to cut in line. I’m just wondering if maybe you could look at it on your lunch break, and if it looks good, then you put your magic mix on it and check it at the end of the day to see what you’ve got. Four hours but no time taken off the clock from your regular work.”
Bosch spread his arms like he was explaining something that was so simple it was beautiful.
“The line stays intact and nobody gets upset.”
Sargent smiled as he raised his hand to punch in the combo on the unit’s door lock. He typed 1-8-5-2 on the keypad, the year Smith & Wesson was founded.
He pushed the door open.
“I don’t know, Harry. We only get fifty minutes for lunch and I need to go out. I don’t bring my lunch like some of the other guys.”
“That’s why you need to tell me what you want for lunch so I can be back here with it at eleven-fifteen.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
Sargent led him to a workstation that was mainly a padded stool and a high table that was littered with gun parts and barrels and several evidence bags containing bullets or handguns. Taped to the wall over the table was the
“PISTOL PETE” MAKES STATE’S CASE
AGAINST ALLEGED MOB HIT MAN
Sargent put Bosch’s package down front and center on the table, which Harry took as a good sign. Bosch looked around to make sure nobody else could see him trying to work Sargent. They were the only ones in the unit so far.
“So what do you think?” Bosch said. “I bet after you guys moved down here you haven’t had a pepper steak from Giamela’s since forever.”
Sargent nodded thoughtfully. The regional lab was only a few years old and it consolidated the crime labs of both the LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office. The LAPD’s gun unit had previously been located at the Northeast Station up near Atwater. The go-to place up there was a sub shop called Giamela’s. Bosch and whoever his partner of the moment was would always stop there, even scheduling “gun runs” around lunchtime, and often taking their take-out subs into the nearby Forest Lawn Memorial Park to eat. Bosch once had a partner who was a baseball fanatic and always insisted that they make a stop on gun runs to check Casey Stengel’s grave. If it was not properly trimmed and weeded, he would personally alert the caretakers to the problem.
“You know what I miss?” Sargent said. “I miss their meatball sub. That sauce was kick-ass.”
“One meatball sub coming up,” Bosch said. “You want cheese on that?”
“No, no cheese. But can you get the sauce on the side in a cup or something? That way it won’t get soggy.”
“Good thinking. I’ll see you at eleven-fifteen.”
Deal done, he turned to leave the unit before anything changed Sargent’s mind.
“Whoa, wait, Harry,” Sargent quickly said. “What about the ballistics matching? You need that, too, don’t you?”
Bosch couldn’t tell whether Sargent was angling for a second sandwich.
“I do, but I want the serial number first because I can go to work with that while the ballistics stuff gets done. Besides, I’m pretty sure we’ve got the match there. I have a witness who’s IDed the gun.”
Sargent nodded and Bosch started again for the door.
“See you later, Pistol Pete.”
Bosch went to his computer as soon as he got to his desk. He had set an alarm at home for 4 A.M. to check for email from Denmark, but there had been none. Now, as he opened his email, he saw a message from Mikkel Bonn, the journalist he had talked to.
Detective Bosch, I have spoken with Jannik Frej now and I have these answers in bold to your questions. Do you know if Anneke Jespersen flew to the United States to pursue a story? If yes, what was the story about? What was she doing here? Frej said she was on a story involving Desert Storm war crimes but it was her practice not to reveal fully her stories until she was sure. Frej does not know exactly who she was seeing or where she was going in the US. His last message from her was that she was going to LA for the story and she would report on riots if the BT would pay her separately. I asked many questions on this point and Frej insisted that she told him she was already going to LA on the war story but would report on the riots if the newspaper would pay. Does this help you?
What can you tell me about her destinations in the United States? She went to Atlanta and San Francisco before coming to L.A. Why? Do you know if she went to any other cities in the USA? Frej does not have answers here.
Before her U.S. trip she went to Stuttgart, Germany, and stayed in a hotel near the U.S. military base. Do you know why? This was the start of the story but Frej does not know who Anneke went to see. He believes there may have been a war crimes investigation unit at the military base there.
