Майкл Коннелли: Two Kinds of Truth

Bosch thought about that. If he needed more time to investigate the case, that might be an option.

“That would be weird, though,” Haller said.

“What would?” Bosch asked.

“Me going into court to ask a judge not to release a prisoner on death row. That would be a first, as a matter of fact. I might have to farm it out to an associate. Being on the wrong side of this could be bad for business, bro. Just saying.”

“You wouldn’t be on the wrong side.”

“All I’m saying is, DNA is the great equalizer. How often do you think the cops get it wrong and send innocent people to prison?”

“Not very often.”

“One percent of the time? I mean, nobody’s perfect, right?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“In this country, there are two million people in prison. Two million. If the system gets it wrong one percent of the time, that is twenty thousand innocent people in jail. Lower it to a half of a percentage point and you’re still at ten thousand people. This is what keeps me awake at night. Why I always say, the scariest client is the innocent man. Because there is so much at stake.”

“Maybe you are the wrong guy for this, then.”

“Look, I’m just saying that the system is imperfect. There are innocent people in prison, innocent people on death row, innocent people executed. These are facts, and you have to think about that before you go whole hog on this. No matter what, you are personally protected. Just remember that.”

“I will. But I gotta go now. I have a meeting.”

“All right, bro. Call me when you need me.”

Bosch disconnected the call, now feeling worse about his situation than when he had started out from the house that morning.

Bosch entered the war room shortly before seven thirty, but Lourdes was already putting up case details and task lists on one of the whiteboards.

“Morning, Bella.”

“Hey, Harry. There’s a fresh pot in the squad.”

“I’m all right for now. You get some sleep?”

“A little. Hard to sleep with the first live murder case we’ve had around here in four years.”

Bosch pulled out a chair at the head of the table and sat down so he could study what she was putting up. To the left she had started two columns with a vertical line between them. One was marked “José” and the other “Junior.” Basic facts about each of the victims were listed below their names. He knew that she had spent most of the afternoon after the murders with the wife and mother of the two victims and she had gathered good intel on the family dynamic. Fresh out of pharmacy school, José Jr. was living at home but he was at odds with his parents over the living and working arrangements.

Lourdes was now writing on a second board and listing investigative leads and tasks that needed to be assigned and performed. Some she wrote in black ink and some in red. There were the autopsies and ballistics to cover. Video from the farmacia ’s cameras going back thirty days prior to the murders was available and would take several hours to review. There were other pharmacy robberies in Los Angeles in recent years that needed to be reviewed for similarities.

“Why the red?” Bosch asked.

“High priority,” Lourdes said.

“What is MBC?”

She had written and underlined the letters in red, then drawn an arrow to her own initials. It was a lead she was going to handle.

“Medical Board of California,” Lourdes said. “I was in Junior’s room yesterday and found a letter from the MBC saying they were in receipt of his complaint and would be in contact after an investigator had reviewed it.”

“Okay,” Bosch said. “What makes it a priority?”

“A couple things. One is that he had the letter in his room in a drawer, like he was hiding it.”

“From who? His parents?”

“I don’t know yet. The other is that the mother gave up that Junior and his father had been fighting lately. She didn’t know what it was about but it was something to do with work. They weren’t talking at home. My hunch is it has something to do with the complaint he made to the medical board. It seems like it’s worth checking out.”

“I agree. Let me know what you get.”

The door opened and Sisto and Luzon entered, followed by Captain Trevino. They all had steaming mugs of coffee.

Trevino was midfifties, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a shaved head. He was in uniform, which was his routine but always seemed odd to Bosch because he was in charge of the detective bureau, where no one wore uniforms. It was known within the department that he was the heir apparent to the chief, but there was no sign that the chief, a lifelong resident of the town, was going anywhere. Bosch’s perception was that this left Trevino frustrated and he channeled it into being a stickler for rules and discipline.

“I’m going to sit in and update the chief after,” Trevino said. “He’s got a Business Leaders breakfast and needs to be there.”

In a small town like San Fernando, the chief had to be equal parts police administrator, politician, and community cheerleader. A double murder on one of the main business and community-gathering streets would be a hot topic, and Valdez would need to calm nerves and promote confidence in the investigation. In some ways that was as important as the investigation itself.

“No problem,” Bosch said.

He and Trevino had gotten off to a rough start when Bosch first came to the department. Based on Bosch’s history with the LAPD, the captain viewed Bosch as a loose cannon who had to be closely monitored. That didn’t work for Bosch, but things smoothed out some a year later when an investigation by Bosch and Lourdes identified and led to the arrest of a serial rapist who had been targeting women in the small city for over four years. The subsequent publicity created a groundswell of community support for the department, with Trevino receiving the lion’s share of credit as the man in charge of the detective squad. Since then, Trevino had been content to give Bosch free rein as he worked through the cold case files and evidence boxes in the city’s old jail. But Bosch sensed that suspicion remained and he knew that as soon as Trevino found out about the Borders situation, he would start whispering in the chief’s ear that Bosch had to go.

“Why don’t we start by looking at the video from the pharmacy?” Bosch said. “Not all of us have seen it. Then we can go around the room and summarize yesterday’s work so Captain Trevino can keep the chief up to speed. Bella?”

Lourdes picked up a remote and turned on one of the screens on the wall opposite the whiteboards. The video from the farmacia was already cued up because Bosch and Lourdes had watched it several times the night before, their last work before heading home.

There were three cameras in the farmacia, and the ceiling camera over the prescription counter offered the most complete recording of the murders. The five people in the war room watched silently as the video advanced in slow motion.

On the screen both José Esquivel and his son were behind the counter in the pharmacy section. They were setting up for the day, as the farmacia opened at ten o’clock each day except Sunday. José Sr. was at the counter, going through a plastic basket with several small white bags in it — packaged prescriptions waiting for pickup. José Jr. was standing at a computer at the end of the counter, apparently checking for new prescriptions sent by medical offices. There were no other employees in the store. It had been determined through interviews the day before that the father and son were the only full-time employees. There was a part-time employee who worked on the busiest days of the week or when one of the Esquivels was off, but she was not a pharmacist and she functioned primarily as a cashier.