Майкл Коннелли - The Night Fire [Harry Bosch - 22]

“Good.”

“I also found this in the box.”

She went into the backpack again and came up with the notebook she had found in the property box. She handed it to Bosch.

“In the crime scene photos this was in the center console of the car. I think it was important to him.”

Bosch started flipping through the pages and looking at the sketches.

“Okay,” he said. “What else?”

“Well, that’s it from Property,” Ballard said. “But I think what I didn’t find there is worth noting, and it’s where you come into the picture.”

“You want to explain that?”

“John Jack Thompson never pulled the evidence in the case,” she said.

She read Bosch’s reaction as the same as hers. If Thompson was working the case, he would have pulled the box at Property and seen what he had.

“You sure?” Bosch asked.

“He’s not on the checkout list,” Ballard said. “I’m not sure he ever investigated this case — unless there’s more at his house.”

“Like what?”

“Like anything that shows he was investigating. Notes, recordings, maybe a second murder book. There’s no indication at all — not one added word — that indicates John Jack pulled this case to work it. It’s almost like he took the book so no one else would work it. So, you need to go back to his widow and see if there’s anything else. Anything that shows what he was doing with this.”

“I can go see Margaret tonight. But remember, we don’t know exactly when he took the murder book. Maybe he took it on his way out the door when he retired and then it was too late to get into Property. He had no badge.”

“But if you were going to take a book so you could work on it, wouldn’t you plan it so you could get to Property before you walked out the door?”

Bosch nodded.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Okay, so you go to Margaret and see about that,” Ballard said. “I made up a list of names from the book. People I want to talk to. I’m going to start running them down as soon as we’re finished here.”

“Can I see the list?”

“’Course.”

For the fourth time Ballard went into the backpack and this time pulled out her own notebook. She opened it and turned it around on the table so Bosch could read the list.

Maxwell Talis

Donald Hilton

Sandra Hilton

Thompson widow

Vincent Pilkey, dealer

Dennard Dorsey, dealer/snitch — protected

Brendan Sloan, narcotics

Elvin Kidd

Nathan Brazil, roommate

Bosch nodded as he looked at the names. Ballard took this to mean he was in agreement.

“Hopefully some of them are still alive. Sloan is still in the department, right?”

“Runs West Bureau. My boss, technically.”

“Then all you have to do is get around his adjutant.”

“That won’t be a problem. Are you going to eat the rest of that donut?”

“No. It’s all yours.”

Ballard grabbed the donut and took a bite. Bosch lifted his cane from the back of the other chair.

“I gotta get back to the courthouse,” he said. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” Ballard said, her mouth full. “Did you see this?”

She put the rest of the donut back on the plate, then opened the binder, unsnapped the rings, and handed Bosch the document she had moved to the front of the murder book.

“It’s redacted,” she said. “Who would black out lines in the statement from the parents?”

“I saw that too,” Bosch said. “It’s weird.”

“The whole book is confidential, why black anything out?”

“I know. I don’t get it.”

“And we don’t know who did it — whether it was Thompson or the original investigators. When you look at those two lines in context — the stepfather talking about adopting the boy — you have to wonder if they were protecting somebody. I’m going to try to run down Hilton’s birth certificate through Sacramento, but that will take forever because I don’t have his original name. That was probably redacted too.”

“I could try to run it down at Norwalk. Next time I go to see Maddie on a weekday.”

Norwalk was the site of Los Angeles County’s record archives. It was at the far south end of the county and with traffic could take an hour each way. Birth records were not accessible by computer to the public or law enforcement. Proper ID had to be shown to pull a birth certificate, especially one guarded by adoption rules.

“That’ll only work if Hilton was born in the county. But worth a try, I guess.”

“Well, one way or another we’ll figure it out. It’s a mystery for now.”

“What’s at the courthouse?”

“I want to see if I can get a subpoena. I want to get there before the judges all split.”

“Okay, I’ll let you go. So, you’ll go see Margaret Thompson later and I’ll run down these names. The ones that are still alive.”

Bosch stood up, holding the docs and his laptop under his arm. He didn’t have a briefcase. He hooked his cane back on the chair so he could reach into his pocket with his free hand.

“So, did you sleep yet today or just go right into this?”

“Yes, Dad, I slept.”

“Don’t call me that. Only one person can call me that and she never does.”

He pulled out some cash and left a twenty on the table, tipping as though there had been four people after all.

“How is Maddie?” Ballard asked.

“A little freaked out at the moment,” Bosch said.

“Why, what happened?”

“She’s got one semester to go down at Chapman and then she graduates. Three weeks ago some creep broke into the house she shares near the school with three other girls. It was a hot prowl. Two of the girls were there asleep.”

“Maddie?”

“No, she was up here with me because of my knee. Helping out, you know? But that doesn’t matter. They’re all freaked out. This guy, he wasn’t there to steal shit, you know, no money or anything taken. He left his semen on one of the girls’ laptops that was on the kitchen table. He was probably looking at photos of her on it when he did his thing. He’s obviously bent.”

“Oh, shit. Did they get a profile off it?”

“Yeah, a case-to-case hit. Same thing four months before. Hot prowl, girls from Chapman, and he left his DNA on a photo that was on the refrigerator. But no match to anybody in the database.”

“So did Maddie and the girls move out?”

“No, they’re all two months from graduation and don’t want to deal with moving. We put on extra locks, cameras inside and out. Alarm system. The local cops put the street on twice-by a shift. But they won’t move out.”

“So that freaks you the fuck out.”

“Exactly. Both hot prowls were on Saturday nights, so I’m thinking that’s this guy’s night out and maybe he’s going to come back. So I’ve been going down and sitting on the place the last two Saturday nights. Me and this knee. I sit in the back seat with my leg up across the seat. I don’t know what I’d do if I saw something but I’m there.”

“Hey, if you want company, I’m there too.”

“Thanks, that means a lot, but that’s my point. Don’t miss your sleep. I remember last year...”

“What about last year? You mean the case we worked?”

“Yeah. We both had sleep deprivation and it... affected things. Decisions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, I don’t want to get into it. You can blame it on me. My decisions were affected, okay? Let’s just make sure we get sleep this time.”

“You worry about you and I’ll worry about me.”

“Got it. Sorry I even brought it up.”

He picked up his cane off the chair and headed toward the door. He was moving slow. Ballard realized she would look like an ass if she walked quickly ahead of him and then out.