Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

“Nope,” Bosch said.

Harry stepped away from them and over to the nearest work truck. He reached over the hood, pulled the windshield wiper back on its hinge and twisted it right and then left. He pulled it sharply and ripped it off the truck.

“Harry, what are you doing?” Valdez said.

“Just give me a minute,” Bosch said.

He took the wiper over to one of the benches and used a pair of pliers to pull the rubber blade off the flat thin metal strip that backed it. He then took a pair of metal snips to cut off two three-inch lengths of the strip. He picked up the pliers again and fashioned the two metal strips into a pick and a flat hook. He had what he needed in less than two minutes.

Bosch went back to the door, squatted in front of the dead bolt, and went to work.

“You’ve done that before,” Valdez said.

“A few times,” Bosch said. “Somebody put a phone light on this.”

All three of the other men turned on cell lights and put the beams over Bosch’s shoulder and onto the dead bolt. It took Bosch three more minutes to turn the lock and open the door.

“Bella?” Valdez called out as they entered.

No answer. Sisto hit the light switches and they went down a hallway as the fluorescents blasted the darkness, peeling off one at a time into the offices they passed. Valdez kept calling out his missing detective’s name but the offices were as quiet as a church on a Monday night. Bosch was the last to peel off, entering the code enforcement bullpen whose three cubicles were just as cramped as the detective bureau across the street. He made his way around the room looking down into each cubicle but seeing no sign of Lourdes.

Soon Sisto came in.

“Anything?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

Bosch saw the nameplate on one of the desks. It reminded him of something else from his morning conversation with Lourdes.

“Sisto, did Bella have a problem with Dockweiler?”

“What do you mean?”

“This morning when she said she was going to come over here to borrow the metal detector, she said she could ask Dockweiler for help. Then she said something about hoping he was in a good mood. Was there a problem between them?”

“Maybe because she kept her job and he got transferred to Public Works?”

“Sounded like something else.”

Sisto had to consider the question further before coming up with another answer.

“Uh, I don’t think it was that big of a deal but back when he was in the bureau with us I remember there was sometimes friction between them. I don’t think at first Dock picked up on the fact that she played for the other team. He made a comment about a lesbian — I forget who she was, but he called her a carpet muncher or something like that. But Bella jumped all over his shit and things were kind of tense for a while there.”

Bosch studied Sisto, expecting more.

“That was it?” he prompted.

“I guess so,” Sisto said. “I mean, I don’t know.”

“What about you? You have a problem with him?”

“Me? No, we were fine.”

“You talk to him? Shoot the shit?”

“Yeah, some. Not a lot.”

“Does he not like lesbians, or is it women he doesn’t like?”

“No, he isn’t gay, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s not what I mean. Come on, Sisto, what kind of guy is he?”

“Look, man, I don’t know. He told me once that when he worked for the Sheriff’s up at Wayside, they did things to the gays.”

That struck a chord with Bosch. Wayside Honor Rancho was a county jail located in the Santa Clarita Valley. All new deputies were assigned to jail duty right out of the academy. Bosch remembered Lourdes telling him that when it appeared that it would be several years before she got a chance to transfer out of the jail division, she started applying to other departments and ended up at San Fernando.

“What things did they do?”

“He said they’d put them in situations, you know. Put them in modules where they knew they would get fucked with, beat up. They took bets and stuff on how long they’d last before they got jumped.”

“Did he know Bella when she was there?”

“I don’t know. I never asked.”

“Who came to San Fernando first?”

“Pretty sure it was Dock.”

Bosch nodded. Dockweiler had seniority on Bella, yet she was retained instead of him when the budget crisis hit. That had to have built animosity.

“What happened when he got moved out of the department?” he asked. “Was he angry?”

“Well, yeah, wouldn’t you be?” Sisto answered. “But he was cool about it. They found him the spot over here. So it was kind of lateral — he didn’t even lose salary.”

“Except no badge and no gun.”

“I think code enforcement has a badge.”

“Not the same, Sisto. You ever heard the phrase ‘If you’re not cop, you’re little people’?”

“Uh, no.”

Bosch grew quiet as he studied the top of Dockweiler’s desk. Nothing he saw seemed suspicious. He heard the dinging of a text on Sisto’s phone.

Pinned to the privacy wall between Dockweiler’s and another desk was a map of the city, partitioned into four code enforcement zones that mirrored the police department’s patrol areas. There was also a list of tips for spotting illegal garage conversions with photo examples of each giveaway:

Extension cords, cables, and hoses running from house to garage

Tape over the seams of the garage door

Air-conditioning units on garage walls

Barbecue grills closer to the garage than the house

Boats, bikes, and other garaged property stored outside

Studying the list, Bosch pictured the houses where the Screen Cutter rapes had occurred. Just three days ago, he had driven the circuit that included all four places. He saw now what he didn’t see then. Each had a garage, each was in a neighborhood where illegal garage conversions were a problem and would draw the attention of code inspectors. Beatriz Sahagun’s house had a garage too.

“It was him,” Bosch said quietly.

Sisto didn’t hear him. Bosch kept grinding it down, putting things together. Dockweiler could roam the city as a code inspector. He could have knocked on doors to perform inspections and selected his victims when he saw them in the course of his work. It was the reason to wear the mask each time.

He realized also that it was Dockweiler who had the extra key to Bosch’s desk. He’d kept it when he left the department but snuck back to read the file on the investigation once Bosch had connected the cases. He knew what Bosch knew and what he was doing at every step of the investigation. And the horror of it all, Bosch knew, was that he had sent Lourdes right to him. The fear and guilt of that realization boiled up in him. He turned away from the desk and saw Sisto typing a text on his phone.

“Is that Dockweiler?” he demanded. “Are you texting Dockweiler?”

“No, man, it’s my girlfriend,” Sisto said. “She wants to know where I am. Why would I text—”

Bosch snatched the phone out of Sisto’s hand and looked at the screen.

“Hey, what the fuck!” Sisto exclaimed.

Bosch read the text and confirmed it was an innocuous Home soon missive. He then flipped the phone back at the young detective but the toss was too hard for such a close distance. It went right through Sisto’s hands, hit him square in the chest, and then clattered to the floor.

“You asshole!” Sisto yelled as he quickly dropped down to grab the phone off the floor. “It better not be—”

As he straightened up Bosch moved in, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and drove him back into the room’s door, banging his back and head hard against it. He then moved right up into his face.