Michael Connelly - The Crossing

“Uh, I’d take Laurel Canyon.”

His suggested route would take longer than the other choice. He hoped to be able to use the extra time to draw more information out of her.

“So, did Ellington tell you ahead of time to give me a ride? Maybe get me to talk outside the room?”

“No, it was just spur of the moment. You needed a ride. I offered. If you want to tell more, I’ll certainly listen.”

“There is something more, but let me ask a few questions first. Let’s start with Ellis and Long. Big surprise today in IAD, or were they a known quantity?”

“Well, you really don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

“They’re bad cops. You guys go after bad cops. I’m just wondering if they were already on the radar.”

“I can’t go into specifics, but, yes, they were on the radar. The thing is, we’re not even remotely talking about the level of action we are looking at today. It involved use of time complaints, insubordination. But usually when you have those things happening, they’re indicators of bigger problems.”

“So no external complaints. All department bred.”

“No, none.”

“What about Long? Is he going to make it?”

“He’ll recover.”

“Is he talking?”

“Last I heard, not yet.”

“And nobody’s got a line on Ellis?”

“Not yet, but not for lack of trying. It’s a Sheriff’s Department op, but we’re all over it. RHD, Major Crimes, Fugitives — they don’t want this to blow up into another Dorner. They want a quick end to it.”

Christopher Dorner was an ex-LAPD cop who went on a killing rampage a couple years before. A massive manhunt ended at a cabin near Big Bear where he killed himself during a firefight with officers who had surrounded the location. His notoriety was such that within the department his last name had become a noun applied to any officer controversy or scandal involving crazy and deadly behavior.

“So, the big question,” Bosch said, “is whether there’s a case? Are they going to be charged?”

“That’s actually two big questions,” Mendenhall said. “The answers, as far as I’m concerned, are yes and yes. But it’s a Sheriff’s case. You never know. We will be looking into anything on our turf, which includes James Allen and whatever else those two had going.”

Bosch nodded and let some more asphalt go under the car before responding.

“So you want my coaching tip on Allen?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“Check out the UC car lot behind the Hollywood Athletic Club. On the back row against the wall is a burnt-orange Camaro that’s been taken out of circulation.”

“Okay.”

“I’m pretty sure Ellis and Long were using it back in March when Allen got dumped in that alley.”

“The trunk?”

Bosch nodded.

“I’ll order a full forensic workup,” she said.

“You get something, send a copy of the report to that asshole Cornell.”

Bosch could see Mendenhall smile in the glow from the dash lights. They drove in silence for a while. She made the turn onto Mulholland and started east. When she spoke, it had nothing to do with the case at hand.

“Harry, I’m curious. Why didn’t you call me after Modesto?”

Bosch was caught off guard.

“That’s a curve ball,” he managed to say while trying to formulate an answer.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” she said. “It’s just that I thought we had a connection when we were up there. Modesto. I thought you might call.”

“Well, I just thought... you know, that with you being in IAD and me being investigated, it would have been uncool to follow up on anything. That could end up with you being the one investigated.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything. Bosch looked over at her and couldn’t read her reaction.

“Forget it,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked that. Very unprofessional. Keep asking your questions.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, what is the current thinking on Ellis and his whereabouts?”

“The current thinking is Mexico,” she said. “He probably had a getaway package ready to go. Car, money, probably multiple IDs. He lived alone and it looks like he never went back after he left Schubert’s office.”

“He’s in the wind.”

She nodded.

“He could be anywhere.”

Ellis waited in darkness, his face a dim shade of blue cast by the light of a phone screen. He waited to take care of the last detail before his exit. His final touch and statement on this place that had changed him in so many ways.

He checked his news feed and reread the story. It contained the slimmest grouping of facts and had not been updated in at least two hours. He knew it was all that would be released tonight. The press conference had been scheduled for the morning, when the sheriff and chief of police would share a podium and address the media together. Ellis considered sticking around to watch it live on local TV, to see how the chief tried to spin it. But his survival instinct overrode that desire. He knew that the hours in between would be best used to put distance between himself and the city. This ugly city that hollows people, corrodes them from the inside out.

Besides, he would get everything on the news feed. The story would no doubt break big and national. Especially after they found Bosch. And after they found the twins.

He thought about the twins. They had not been watching the news. They knew nothing and expected nothing but the usual from him. Even when they saw the weapon in his hand, they believed he was there to protect them from some outside threat. They died thinking that.

He opened the photo app on the phone and went to the archives. He had taken three shots of the twins in final repose. But he realized it was impossible to tell that they were dead in these photos. Their faces had been so sculpted and stretched and reshaped by surgeries as to look frozen in both life and death.

After a while he went back to the news feed once more. Still nothing new on the events in Schubert’s office. There wasn’t even an update on Long’s medical status. All that had been reported so far was that he was alive and being treated at Cedars, where he was listed in critical condition.

Long’s name had not been put out publicly. The stories just said he was an LAPD vice officer who was off duty at the time of the shooting. No explanation was offered for what he was doing at the plastic surgery center where the events occurred.

There was no mention of Ellis either. No word that they were looking for him or that he had even been at the site. All of that would come in the morning when the chief of police stood before the media and tried to put the spin on another story of cops gone wrong.

Ellis wondered how much time he would have before Long started talking. He had no doubt that it would happen eventually. Long was the weak one. He could be manipulated. That was why Ellis had chosen him. But now the others would manipulate him. The investigators. The interrogators. The attorneys. They would squeeze him, break him down, and then finally give him a glimpse of light, and he would go for it. It would be a false light but he would not know that.

Once more Ellis reviewed his situation. Had he ever made any mention to Long about his exit strategy? The getaway plan was only as good as its self-containment. It only worked if just one person knew the plan, and once more Ellis reassured himself that Long knew nothing. He was safe.

After being dropped off in front of his house, Bosch went into the carport to the Cherokee. Sutton had kept the keys to Bosch’s rental car but not the ring that had his house and personal car keys on it. He quietly unlocked the Jeep’s front door and leaned in behind the wheel. He reached under the driver’s seat and then up into the springs. His hand found the grip of the Kimber Ultra Carry. He brought it out and checked the action and the magazine. It had served as his backup gun for the last decade of his LAPD career. He put a bullet into the chamber and was good to go.