Michael Connelly: The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Hill took two weeks to get back to Bosch, and her assessment of the cases concluded that the perpetrator was not choosing the attack dates because he wished to impregnate his victims. Quite the opposite. The details of the stalking and subsequent attacks revealed a subject with a deep-seated hatred of women and disgust toward the bodily ritual of bleeding. The day of the attack is chosen because the victim is considered by the offender to be at the cleanest part of her cycle. For him, psychologically, it is the safest moment for him to attack. Hill added to the profile of the rapist by describing him as a narcissistic predator with above-average intelligence. It was likely, however, that he had a job that did not involve intellectual stimulus and allowed him to fly below the radar when it came to the assessment of his employers and coworkers.

The offender also had a high degree of confidence in his skill at eluding identification and capture. The crimes involved careful planning and waiting and yet were marked by what seemed to be a critical mistake in leaving his semen in the victim. Discounting that this was part of an intention to impregnate, Hill concluded that it was intended to taunt. The offender was giving Bosch all the evidence he needed to convict him. Bosch just had to find him.

Hill also focused on the seeming incongruity of the offender leaving probative evidence of identity behind — his semen — and yet committing the crimes while masking his visual identity. She concluded that the offender might be someone the victims had previously met or seen, or he intended to make contact with them in some manner following the attacks, possibly deriving some of his satisfaction from getting close to the victims again.

Megan Hill’s profile ended with an ominous warning:

If you eliminate the idea that the perpetrator’s motive is to give life (impregnate) and realize that the attack is urged by hate, then it is clear that this subject has not concluded his evolution as predator. It is only a matter of time before these rapes become kills.

The warning resulted in Bosch and Lourdes upping the game. They started by sending out another set of e-mails to local and national law enforcement agencies with Hill’s assessment attached. On the local level, they followed up with phone calls in an effort to break through the typical law enforcement inertia that descends on investigators who have too many cases and too little time.

The response was close to nothing. One burglary detective from LAPD’s North Hollywood Division reported that he had an open burglary case involving a screen cutting but there was no rape involved. The detective said the victim was a male Hispanic twenty-six years old. Bosch urged the investigator to go back to the victim to see if he had a wife or girlfriend who might have been attacked but was afraid or embarrassed to report the assault. A week later the LAPD detective reported back and said there was no female living in the apartment. The case was unconnected.

Bosch was now playing a waiting game. The rapist’s DNA was not in the databases. He had never been swabbed. He had left no fingerprints or other evidence behind other than his semen. Bosch found no other connecting cases in San Fernando or elsewhere. The debate over whether to go public with the case and ask for the help of citizens was simmering on the back burner in the office of Chief Valdez. It was an age-old law enforcement question: Go public and possibly draw a lead that breaks the case open and leads to an arrest? Or go public and possibly alert the predator, who changes up his patterns or moves on and visits his terror on an unsuspecting community somewhere else?

In the Screen Cutter case Bosch and Lourdes had conflicting views. Lourdes wanted to go public, if only to chase the rapist out of San Fernando if the move produced no leads. Bosch wanted more time to quietly look for him. He felt that going public would indeed chase him out of town but that it would not stop the victim count. Predators didn’t stop — until they were caught. They just adapted and continued, moving like sharks to the next victim. Bosch didn’t want to move the threat to another community. He felt a moral obligation to chase the suspect down here where he was active.

But there was no right answer, of course, and the chief appeared to be waiting, hoping that Bosch would come through and break the case before another victim was attacked. Bosch was ultimately relieved not to have the decision on his shoulders. He figured this was why the chief made the big bucks and he made none.

Bosch checked his e-mail now and saw he had no new messages in his queue with Screen Cutter in the subject line. Disappointed, he shut down the computer. He put his notebook back in his pocket and wondered if Trevino had looked down on it while hovering in the cubicle. It had been opened to the page with James Franklin Aldridge’s name written on it.

He left the squad room without bothering to say good-bye to Trevino or write his time down on the board at the front door.

After leaving the station Bosch got on the 5 freeway and turned back to the Whitney Vance case. Not coming up with any birth date or other information on Vibiana Duarte on the DMV database was disappointing but no more than a temporary setback. Bosch was headed south to Norwalk, where the time-travel gold mine was housed: the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, the place he spent so much time as a cold case investigator in the Vital Records office that he knew exactly how the clerks liked their coffee. He felt confident he would be able to answer some questions about Vibiana Duarte there.

Bosch put a CD in the Jeep’s music slot and started listening to a young horn player named Christian Scott. The first track up, “Litany Against Fear,” had a relentless sound and drive to it and that’s what Bosch felt he needed at the moment. It took him an hour to get down to Norwalk after a slow crawl around the east edge of downtown. He pulled into the lot fronting the seven-story county building and killed the engine while Scott was in the middle of “Naima,” which Bosch thought compared favorably with John Handy’s classic version recorded fifty years earlier.

Just as he stepped out of the car his cell phone chirped and he checked the screen. It said Unknown Callerbut he took it anyway. It was John Creighton and the call was not a surprise.

“So, you saw Mr. Vance?” he asked.

“I did,” Bosch answered.

“Well, how did it go?”

“It went fine.”

Bosch was going to make Creighton dig for it. It might be considered passive-aggressive behavior on his part but he was keeping the wishes of his client in mind.

“Is there anything we can help with?”

“Uh, no, I think I can handle it. Mr. Vance wants it kept confidential, so I’ll just leave it at that.”

There was a long silence before Creighton spoke next.

“Harry,” he said, “you and I go way back to the department, and of course Mr. Vance and I go way back as well. As I said yesterday before hiring you, he’s an important client of this firm and if there is anything wrong regarding his comfort and security, then I need to know it. I was hoping as a former brother in blue you might share with me what is going on. Mr. Vance is an old man, I don’t want him taken advantage of.”

“By ‘taken advantage of,’ are you talking about me?” Bosch asked.

“Of course not, Harry. Poor choice of words. What I mean is if the old man is being extorted or otherwise facing any sort of trouble involving the need for a private detective, well, we are here and we have enormous resources at our fingertips. We need to be brought in.”

Bosch nodded. He expected this sort of play from Creighton after the demand in his office to be looped in.