Майкл Коннелли: Two Kinds of Truth

After the war room meeting, Bosch left the station, while Lourdes attempted to get hold of someone in the investigations unit of the state medical board. He walked two blocks to a shopping plaza on Truman and into a bodega that sold throwaway phones to new immigrants who could not establish addresses and the credit histories required by the big service providers. He bought a throwaway with texting capability and a full charge. He then stepped out of the store and sent a two-word text to Lucia Soto.

Thank you.

Less than a minute later he got a response.

Who is this?

He typed in,

Go to a private spot. 5 minutes.

He checked his watch and started walking back to the station. Five minutes later he was standing in the side parking lot and made the call. Soto took the call but said nothing.

“Lucia, it’s me.”

“Harry? What are you doing? Where’s your phone?”

“This is a burner. I thought you wouldn’t want to have any record of talking to me.”

“Don’t be silly. What is going on? What are you thanking me for?”

“For the file.”

“What file?”

“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it, fine. I get it. I have to tell you, I got through the old case — my part in it — and it’s all there, Lucia. It was a solid case. Circumstantial, yes, but solid down the line to the verdict. You need to stop this whole thing and not put this guy back on the street.”

“Harry...”

She didn’t finish.

“What, Lucia? Look, don’t you understand? I’m trying to save you from getting caught in the middle of a big problem here. Somehow, some way, this is a scam. Can you get me a copy of that video Tapscott showed me of you two opening the box?”

There was another long pause before Soto responded.

“I think the only one with a big problem here is you, Harry.”

Bosch had nothing to say to that. He sensed that something had changed in her view of him. He had fallen in her eyes, and she had sympathy for him but not the respect she’d once had. He was missing something here. He had to get back to the investigative file he knew she had stuffed into his mailbox, whether she acknowledged it or not. He now had to consider that she had done so not to help him but to warn him about what lay ahead.

“Listen to me,” Soto said. “I’m putting my neck out here for you because... because we were partners. You need to let this play out without setting a fire. If you don’t, you are going to get hurt in a big way.”

“You don’t think it’s going to hurt in a big way to see that guy — that killer — walk out of San Quentin a free man?”

“I need to go now. I suggest you read the whole file.”

She disconnected and Bosch was left holding a phone that he’d just spent forty dollars for and would probably never use again.

He headed toward his car. He had brought the Skyler file with him from the house and left it on the rear floorboard. Soto had clearly just directed him back to the file. There was something in the new investigation that she was pushing him toward and that, at least in Alex Kennedy’s mind, invalidated the old investigation. Bosch suspected it was more than DNA.

Before he made it to the car, the side door of the station opened and Lourdes stepped out.

“Harry, I was coming to get you. Where are you going?”

“Just getting something from my car. What’s up?”

“Let’s take a ride. I talked to an investigator for the state medical board.”

Bosch shoved the burner into his pocket and followed her to her city ride. He got in the passenger side and she started backing out. He saw that she had put a piece of scratch paper down on the center console that said “S.F. and Terra Bella,” which he knew was an intersection in the nearby Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was to the immediate south of San Fernando.

“Pacoima?” he asked.

“José Jr. sent an e-mail to the medical board, complaining that a clinic down in Pacoima was overprescribing oxycodone,” she said. “I just want to do a drive-by, check the place out.”

“Got it. When did Junior send the e-mail?”

“Two months ago. He sent it to the Central Complaint Unit in Sacramento, where it sat for a while before being sent down to the enforcement unit in L.A. I tracked down the guy who caught it there. He said he was early stages with it. Never talked to José Jr. and was gathering data before making any sort of enforcement move.”

“Gathering data? You mean like how much the clinic was prescribing?”

“Yes, identifying the clinic, what doctors were in there, licensing, prescription counts, all of that kind of stuff. Early stages, which I think was his way of saying nothing had happened yet. He did say that this clinic was not on their radar and that it sounded like a fly-by-night pill mill. Here today, gone as soon as authorities take notice. The thing is, he said, most of the time they don’t use legit pharmacies. Usually the pharmacies are in cahoots, or at least willing to look the other way and fill the prescriptions.”

“So, let’s say José Sr. was looking the other way. The son graduates from pharmacy school all wide-eyed and naive and thinks he’s doing a good thing, pointing his finger at a shady clinic.”

Lourdes nodded.

“Exactly,” she said. “I told you he was a straight shooter. He saw what was going on and made the complaint to the board.”

“So this is what the father and son were having issues with — why they were fighting,” Bosch added. “Either José Sr. liked the money the bogus prescriptions brought in, or he was afraid of the danger the complaint might bring in.”

“Not only that, Junior said in his e-mail that he was going to stop filling prescriptions from the clinic. That could have been the most dangerous move of all.”

Bosch felt a dull pain in his chest. It was guilt and embarrassment. He had underestimated José Esquivel Jr. He had first asked about gang affiliation and jumped to the conclusion that Junior’s activities and associations would be the motivating factor in the murders. He was probably correct in one sense, but he was far off the mark about the young man. The truth revealed that he was an idealist who saw something wrong and was blindly trying to do the right thing. And it cost him his life.

“Damn,” he said. “He didn’t know what he was doing if he stopped filling scrips.”

“Which makes it so sad,” added Lourdes.

Bosch was silent after that as he thought about his mistake. It bothered him deeply because a relationship was always established between a victim and the detective charged with solving the crime. Bosch had doubted the goodness of his victim and let him down. In doing so he had let himself down as well. It made him want to double-down on his efforts to find the two men who had moved so swiftly and lethally through the pharmacy the morning before.

Bosch thought about the terror José Jr. must have felt as he tried to make it down the hallway to the exit door. The horror of knowing he had left his father behind.

Bosch couldn’t be sure, because there was no sound on the video and the shooting of José Jr. was off camera, but he guessed that the father had been shot first, and in the hallway his son had heard it as he tried to escape. Just before he too was shot and his killer came up on him to commit a final indignity and finish the job.

They took Truman south to where it merged with San Fernando Road and soon they crossed the city limits and into Pacoima. There was no “Welcome to Los Angeles” sign and the difference between the two communities was stark. The streets here were trash-strewn, the walls marked with graffiti. The medians were brown and weed-filled. Plastic bags were snagged on the fence line that guarded the Metro tracks that paralleled the road. To Bosch it was depressing. Though Pacoima had the same ethnic makeup as San Fernando, there was a visible disparity in the economic levels of the side-by-side communities.