Майкл Коннелли - Two Kinds of Truth

“Charlie Hovan. Thanks, Jerry.”

Bosch looked at Lourdes to see if she had anything else to ask. She shook her head. She was ready to go. Bosch looked back at his old partner.

“So we’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Thanks for the cooperation.”

Bosch stood up and Lourdes followed.

“Harry, there’s a story about Santos,” Edgar said. “I don’t know if it’s true but you should know.”

“Go.”

“The DEA flipped one of his shills. Guy was an oxy addict and they leveraged him. He was supposed to keep working the game and feed intel back to the narcs.”

“What happened?”

“Somehow Santos figured it out or got wind of it. One day the informant got on the plane with a bunch of other shills and took off for a day’s work. But when the plane landed, he wasn’t on it anymore.”

“He got tossed.”

Edgar nodded.

“They’ve got the Salton Sea down there,” he said. “Supposedly the high salt content of the water chews a body up pretty quick.”

Bosch nodded.

“Good to know who we’re dealing with,” he said.

“Yeah, you two watch yourselves out there,” Edgar added.

After leaving the meeting in the Reagan Building, Bosch and Lourdes walked over to the Nickel Diner on Main Street for a late lunch. Bosch was a regular at the restaurant when he had worked downtown for the LAPD but had not been back since he’d left the department. Monica, one of the owners, welcomed him warmly and still remembered his routine order of a BLT sandwich.

Bosch and Lourdes discussed the information they had gotten from Edgar and debated whether to reach out to the DEA agent they had gotten a line on. Ultimately, they decided to wait until they had a better handle on their case and knew more about the activities surrounding La Farmacia Familia and the clinic in Pacoima. They still had nothing connecting the two things other than José Esquivel Jr.’s complaint about the clinic.

On the drive back up to the Valley, Lourdes took a call from Sisto, who said he had found a few things during his review of video from the pharmacy cameras that he wanted everybody on the team to see. Lourdes told him to set it up in the war room and they’d be back by four.

Exhaustion started to settle over Bosch as the car moved slowly in early rush-hour traffic. He made the mistake of leaning his head against the passenger-door window and soon he was out. It was the buzzing of his phone in his pocket that woke him up a half hour later.

“Shit,” he said as he dug the phone out. “Was I snoring?”

“A little bit,” Lourdes said.

He answered the call before it went to message. He was still disoriented from sleep when he mumbled his name into the device.

“Yes, sir, this is Officer Jericho with San Quentin ISU. Did you say you are Detective Bosch?”

“Yes, Bosch. That’s me.”

“Lieutenant Menendez asked me to handle an inmate research request and get back to you. The inmate is Preston Ulrich Borders.”

“Yes, what’ve you got?”

Bosch reached in his pocket for a notebook and pen. He tilted his head to hold the phone between his ear and shoulder and got ready to write.

“Not a lot, sir,” Jericho said. “He only has one approved visitor and that is his attorney. His name is Lance Cronyn.”

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Do you have any cross-outs? People who used to be approved?”

“This is off a computer, sir. We don’t have cross-outs.”

“Okay, do you have a visitation history with the lawyer?”

“Yes, sir. It shows he received approved-visitor status in January last year. He has made regular visits on the first Thursday of every month ever since. Except he missed December last year.”

“That’s a lot of visits, isn’t it? I mean that’s like fourteen or fifteen visits so far.”

“I wouldn’t know what would constitute a lot of visits, sir. These guys on death row get a lot of legal attention.”

“Okay, what about mail? Did the lieutenant ask you to see what was going on with mail that goes to Borders?”

“Yes, he did. I reviewed that, sir, and Inmate Borders receives about three pieces of mail per day and it goes through a review process. He has had mail rejected because the letters were pornographic in nature or contained pornography. Nothing else unusual.”

“Do you keep any sort of entry log for knowing who is sending the mail to him?”

“No, sir, we don’t do that.”

Bosch thought for a moment. The results of his request to Menendez were coming up dry. He looked out the windshield at a freeway sign and realized that he had slept through almost the entire drive back to San Fernando. They would be on Maclay in five minutes.

He took a long shot on one last tack with Jericho.

“You said you’re on a computer, right?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jericho said.

“Can you look up inmates anywhere in the DOC system or just San Quentin?”

“This is the system-wide database.”

“Good. Can you look up another inmate for me? His name is—”

“Lieutenant Menendez didn’t ask me to check multiple inmates.”

“That’s okay, I can hold while you ask him.”

There was a pause while Jericho decided whether he really wanted to ask his lieutenant if it was okay to look up another name.

“What is the name?” he finally asked.

“Lucas John Olmer. He’s probably listed as deceased.”

Jericho asked Bosch to spell the full name and he heard typing.

“Yes, deceased,” Jericho said. “D-O-D November ninth, twenty fifteen.”

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Is there still an approved-visitor list on the file?”

“Uh, hold one.”

Bosch waited.

“Yes,” Jericho finally said. “He had five visitors approved.”

“Give them to me,” Bosch said.

He wrote the names Jericho recited in his notebook.

Carolyn Olmer

Peyton Fornier

Wilma Lombard

Lance Cronyn

Victoria Remple

Bosch stared at the list. One was obviously a family member, and the other women were probably prison groupies, women attracted to a man of danger as long as the danger is incarcerated. Only Cronyn’s name was important. The lawyer currently representing Preston Borders had previously represented the now dead inmate who supposedly committed the murder that Borders was held on death row for.

“How did you know?” Jericho asked.

“Know what?” Bosch said.

“That the lawyer was on both visitor lists.”

“I didn’t until now.”

But it was an obvious thing to check, and Bosch knew Soto and Tapscott had to have made the connection as well. And yet it had not hindered the conclusion that Borders was innocent in the killing of Danielle Skyler.

Bosch knew he needed to get to the file and review the second half — the recent investigation. He thanked Jericho for his time and asked him to pass on his appreciation to Lieutenant Menendez. He then put both his phone and notebook away.

“Harry, what’s going on?” Lourdes asked.

“It’s a personal matter,” Bosch said. “It’s not related to our case.”

“It is if it’s keeping you up at night and then you’re falling asleep in my car.”

“I’m an old man. Old men take naps.”

“I’m not kidding. You need to be on your game for this.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t happen again. I’m on my game.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the SFPD station. They entered the detective bureau through the side door and immediately went to the war room, where Sisto, Luzon, and Trevino were waiting.

“Whatcha got?” Lourdes asked.

“Take a look,” Sisto said.

He was holding the remote for one of the screens. There was a frozen image from the camera over the prescription counter at La Farmacia Familia. Sisto hit the play button. Bosch first noted the time-and-date stamp. The video was recorded thirteen days before the murders.