Michael Connelly: The Crossing

Thoughts of injustice prompted by the newspaper article made Bosch wander from the carburetor project. He got up from the table and wiped his hands on the shop cloth he kept with his tools. He then threw it down, remembering that he used to spread murder books out on this table, not motorcycle parts. He opened the sliding glass door in the living room and walked out onto the deck to look at the city. His house was cantilevered on the west side of the Cahuenga Pass, offering him a view across the 101 freeway to Hollywood Heights and Universal City.

The 101 freeway was choked with traffic moving both ways through the pass. Even on a Sunday afternoon. Since his retirement Bosch had reveled in not being a part of it anymore. The traffic, the workday, the tension, and the responsibility of it all.

But he also thought of it as a false sense of revelry. He knew that, no matter how stressful it was being down there in that slow-moving river of steel and light, he belonged there. That in some way he was needed down there.

Mickey Haller had appealed to him at Friday’s lunch on the grounds that his client was an innocent man. That of course would have to be proved. But Haller had missed the other half of that equation. If his client was truly innocent, then there was a killer out there whom no one was even looking for. A killer devious enough to set up an innocent man. Despite his protestations at the restaurant, that fact bothered Bosch and was not far from his thoughts throughout the whole weekend. It was something he had trouble leaving alone.

He took his phone out of his pocket and hit a number on the favorites list. The call was answered after five rings by the urgent voice of Virginia Skinner.

“Harry, I’m on deadline, what is it?”

“It’s Sunday night, what are you—”

“I got called in.”

“What’s going on?”

“Sandy Milton was involved in a hit-and-run last night in the Woodland Hills.”

Milton was a conservative city councilman. Skinner was a politics reporter for the Times . Bosch understood why she’d be called in on a Sunday. But what he didn’t understand is why she had not called him to tell him, maybe pick his brain about who she should call in the LAPD to try to get details. It underlined for him what had been going on in their relationship for the past month or so. Or rather not going on.

“I have to go, Harry.”

“Right. Sorry. I’ll call you after.”

“No, I’ll call you.”

“Okay. Are we still having dinner tonight?”

“Yes, fine, but I need to go.”

She disconnected. Bosch went back inside the house to grab a beer out of the refrigerator and to check its stores. He determined that he had nothing he could tempt Virginia with to come up the mountain. Besides, Bosch’s daughter would be coming home from her Police Explorer’s shift at about eight and it could get awkward with Virginia in the house. She and Maddie were still in the early stages of getting to know each other’s boundaries.

Bosch decided that when Skinner called back, he would offer to meet her somewhere for dinner downtown.

He had just opened a bottle and switched the CD to a Ron Carter import recorded at the Blue Note Tokyo when his phone buzzed.

“Hey, that was fast.”

“I just turned in the story. It’s just a sidebar on the political implications for Milton. Richie Bed-wetter will call me in ten or fifteen minutes to go over the edit. Is that enough time to talk?”

Richie Bed-wetter was her editor, Richard Ledbetter. She called him that because he was inexperienced and young — more than twenty years her junior — but insisted on trying to tell her how to handle her beat and write her stories and a once-a-week column on local politics, which he wanted to call a blog. Things would be coming to a head between them soon, and Bosch was worried that Virginia was the vulnerable one, since her experience translated into a higher paycheck and therefore a more appealing target to management.

“Where do you want to go? Somewhere downtown?”

“Or near your place. Your call. But not Indian.”

“Of course, no Indian. Let me think on it and I’ll have a plan when you’re close. Call me before you reach Echo Park. In case.”

“Okay. But listen, can you do me a favor and pull up some stories on a case?”

“What case?”

“There’s a guy that got arrested for murder. LAPD case, I think. His name is Da’Quan Foster. I want to see—”

“Yeah, Da’Quan Foster. The guy who killed Lexi Parks.”

“Right.”

“Harry, that’s a big case.”

“How big?”

“You don’t need me to pull stories. Just go on the paper’s website and punch in her name. There are a lot of stories about her because of who she was and because he didn’t get arrested until like a month after it happened. And it’s not an LAPD case. It’s Sheriff’s. Happened in West Hollywood. Look, I gotta go. Just got the signal from Richie.”

“Okay, I’ll—”

She was gone. Bosch put the phone in his pocket and went back to the dining room table. Holding the corners of the newspaper, he pulled the carburetor project to the side. He then took his laptop down off a shelf and turned it on. While he waited for it to boot, he looked at the carburetor sitting on the newspaper. He realized he had been wrong to think that restoring the old motorcycle could take the place of anything.

On the stereo Ron Carter was accompanied by two guitars and playing a Milt Jackson song called “Bags’ Groove.” It got Bosch thinking about his own groove and what he was missing.

When the computer was ready he pulled up the Times website and searched the name Lexi Parks. There were 333 stories in which Lexi Parks was mentioned, going back six years, long before her murder. Bosch narrowed it to the current year and found twenty-six stories listed by date and headline. The first was dated February 10, 2015: Well-Liked WeHo Asst. Manager Found Murdered in Bed .

Bosch scanned the entries until he came to a headline dated March 19, 2015: Gang “Shot Caller” Arrested in Parks Murder .

Bosch went back and clicked on the first story, figuring he could at least read the initial story on the murder and the first on the arrest before heading to his car for the drive downtown.

The initial report on the murder of Lexi Parks was more about the victim than the crime because the Sheriff’s Department was revealing few details about the actual murder. In fact, all the details contained in the report could be summarized in one sentence: Parks had been beaten to death in her bed and was found by her husband when he returned home from working the midnight shift as a Sheriff’s deputy in Malibu.

Bosch cursed out loud when he read the part about the victim’s husband being a deputy. That would make Bosch’s possible involvement in the case for the defense an even greater offense to those in law enforcement. Haller had conveniently left that detail out when he urged Bosch to look into the case.

Still, he continued to read, and learned that Lexi Parks was one of four assistant city managers for West Hollywood. Among her responsibilities were the departments of Public Safety, Consumer Protection, and Media Relations. It was her position as the chief spokesperson for the city and the front-line media interface that accounted for the “well-liked” description in the headline. She was thirty-eight years old at the time of her death and had worked for the city for twelve years, starting as a code inspector and rising steadily through promotions.

Parks had met her husband, Deputy Vincent Harrick, while both were on the job. West Hollywood contracted with the Sheriff’s Department to provide law enforcement services and Harrick was assigned to the station on San Vicente Boulevard. Once Parks and Harrick got engaged, Harrick asked for a transfer out of the West Hollywood station to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest with both of them working for the city. He worked at first in the south county out of the Lynwood station and then transferred out to Malibu.