Michael Connelly - The Crossing

“Can you make a call out to Detective Sutton?” Bosch asked. “This is related to the two-bagger yesterday in the Sunset Plaza jewelry store. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be his case.”

This time they didn’t put him in the boardroom at the West Hollywood substation. He was placed in a gray-walled interrogation room, the eye of a camera watching him from above. They kept him handcuffed and didn’t give him back his phone, wallet, or keys.

The Glock was as good as gone, too.

At the two-hour mark Bosch’s hands were numb and he was growing increasingly restless from the wait. He knew full well that the investigators — whether led by Dick Sutton or not — would be at the crime scene, supervising the collection and documentation of physical evidence. But what frustrated Bosch was that no one had even conducted a five-minute preliminary interview with him. For all he knew, the information he had given Sergeant Cotilla had not been forwarded to the investigators and there wasn’t even a Wanted alert out yet on Don Ellis. Bosch figured that he could be across the Mexican border before the Sheriff’s Department finally put out the alert.

At the 150-minute mark he got up and walked to the door of the box. He turned his back to it and used his hands to try to turn the knob. As he expected, the door was locked. Angrily he started kicking backwards toward the door, driving his heel into the kick panel. It created a loud noise that Bosch expected would bring a response — if not directly to the box, then to the cameras.

He looked up, certain that his actions were now being monitored by the camera gazers.

“Hey!” he yelled up. “I want to talk. Send somebody in to talk to me. Now!”

Twenty more minutes went by. Bosch was considering whether to start breaking the furniture. The table was old and scarred and looked as though it had withstood the assaults of many. But the chairs were different. They were newer and the support struts were thin enough that Bosch knew he could break them with his feet.

He looked up at the camera.

“I know you can hear me,” he called out. “Get somebody in here now. I have important information. Dick Sutton, Lazlo Cornell, Sheriff Martin himself. I don’t care, a killer is getting away.”

He waited a beat and was about to start another rant when he heard the door being unlocked. It opened and in stepped Dick Sutton. He acted like he had no idea what Bosch had been through for the last three hours.

“Harry, sorry to hold you up in here,” he began. “I’ve been working the crime scene and am just now getting back over here to talk to you and see what we’ve got.”

“Well,” Bosch said, “you just saved the station having to replace the furniture in here, because I was about to start busting the place up. I can’t feel my hands, Dick.”

“Oh, Jesus, they shouldn’t have done that. Turn around and let me get those.”

Bosch turned his back to Sutton and soon felt the relief of blood circulating in his hands again.

“Sit down,” Sutton said. “Let’s talk.”

Bosch was rubbing his hands together, trying to get rid of the pins and needles sensation. He kicked out a chair and sat down.

“Why was the door locked, Dick?” he asked.

“Precaution,” Sutton said. “We had to see what we had first.”

“And?”

“And it’s a complicated scene. You told the sergeant out there that a fourth man was involved and that he got away.”

“That’s right, Don Ellis. He’s Long’s partner, though he threw him under the bus back there.”

“How so?”

“Used him as a shield when the shooting started. Then left him behind. Speaking of Long, did he make it?”

“Yeah, he made it. Just a few blocks from Cedars — that was lucky. My partner’s over there now, hoping to get in a room with him and hear his story.”

“I wish I could be there for that. The guy’s going to lie his ass off and put everything on me, or if he’s smart, he’ll put it on Ellis.”

“We’ll worry about Long later. I want to hear your story, Harry. You told the sergeant that these are the two guys who took down the jewelry store yesterday?”

“That and Lexi Parks and a male pro in Hollywood a couple months ago. They’ve been busy.”

“All right, we’ll get to all of that, but tell me what happened up in that office today.”

“I can tell you but you could also hear it for yourself.”

This gave Sutton great pause. Bosch nodded.

“Bring me my phone,” Bosch said. “I recorded my whole interview with Schubert on my phone. It was still taping when Ellis and Long showed up.”

“You’re saying you have the shooting on tape?” Sutton said.

“That’s right. But you can’t access it without a warrant. You want to hear it now, bring me the phone. I’ll play it for you. Bring Cornell and Schmidt in here. I want them to hear it, too.”

Bosch considered in that moment whether he should ask for Haller to be called in as well, but he let the thought go. The last time he had called Haller in, things had not gone well. Bosch had been in a thousand interview rooms before, and there was no move a detective could make that he wouldn’t see coming. He felt he could protect himself as well as Haller could protect him.

Sutton got up and moved toward the door.

“Dick, one other thing,” Bosch said.

Sutton paused, hand on the doorknob.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Heads-up on the recording,” Bosch said. “My coaching tip is to make sure it is handled right. It can’t disappear or get buried. You’re not the only one who has it.”

“Haller?”

“That’s right.”

“So you took the time to send it to him before you surrendered out there?”

Bosch nodded.

“I’m not stupid, Dick,” he said. “The LAPD isn’t going to like the way this case falls out and I don’t think the Sheriff’s Department is going to like the outcome much either. You’ve got a guy in county for a killing Long and Ellis did. So, yeah, I took the time to get it to my lawyer.”

Sutton opened the door and left.

Bosch had to be moved back to the boardroom for the playing of the recording from his phone. This was to accommodate the crowd of investigators and brass who needed to listen to the forty-two-minute audio accounting of what happened in Dr. Schubert’s office. There was Sutton, of course, and Schmidt and Cornell, as well as two detectives from the LAPD’s Officer Involved Shooting team and one from the Internal Affairs Division.

The IAD investigator was Nancy Mendenhall and Bosch knew her from a case when he was still with the department. His experience with her had been good and fair. Seeing her in the group gathered around the oval table put a positive spin on things for Bosch. He knew she would listen and do the right thing — as far as she was allowed. Also in the room was Captain Ron Ellington, commander of LAPD’s Professional Standards Bureau, which included Internal Affairs. He was Mendenhall’s boss and was there because it would be his report on the exploits of Ellis and Long that would land on the desks of the chief of police and the Police Commission.

Even though the shooting had occurred on Sheriff’s Department turf, the investigation was now a joint-department affair because of the involvement of Ellis and Long. Sutton explained this after the group was seated around the table. He also announced that there was a recording of the shooting and that he wanted the group to hear it first. He invited Bosch to offer commentary where needed as it played.

The phone was then placed on speaker mode and the recording played, with Bosch stopping the playback from time to time to describe things visually or to explain how Schubert’s responses to questions fit with the investigation of the murder of Alexandra Parks and the murders that followed. Only Mendenhall took notes. The others just listened and sometimes cut off Bosch’s explanations as if they didn’t want him to interpret the meaning of things said in Schubert’s office.