Michael Connelly: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories

Bosch nodded.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. I was watching because my guy was in his car and thought maybe if there was something going on, I was going to see it right there. But she got in her car and left. Then my guy left and I followed him.”

“Nothing else with her in the parking lot.”

“Not in the parking lot, no.”

“Meaning…?”

“Well, I don’t know if it means anything at all. But I was on the job once, a long, long time ago, and I know you guys want everything about everything. So I’ll give you everything. On the freeway she almost lost control of her car.”

“How so?”

“I’m not really sure but I think she was doing something, maybe she dropped something or she was reaching for something, and it made her swerve out of her lane and then back into it. She looked like she was drunk-driving but she wasn’t drunk. When I was watching her in the card room she was drinking bottled water only.”

“Was it a cell phone? Was she looking down while driving?”

“I don’t think so. Not a cell phone. I probably would have seen the light. Anyway, when she swerved I was right behind her so I lit her up with my brights to see if she was all right. I didn’t see any phone. She was sort of bent over like she had dropped something down by the bottom of the door. She sat up when I hit her with the brights. She looked back at me in the rearview and I turned them off.”

Bosch thought about this for a few minutes, wondering what Tracey Blitzstein had been doing. He then realized that maybe she had made the same mistake he had just made, mistaking Turnbull for a follower, and was hiding the money she had won under the seat as a precaution against robbery.

“Do you think she saw you leaving the casino lot?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She could have.”

“Is there a chance she could have thought you were following her? Or a chance that she thought the guy you were following was following her?”

Turnbull drank some coffee and thought over his answer before voicing it.

“If she thought anybody was following her, it would have been me. We were all going the same way but my guy got ahead of her. So if she was checking the mirrors, she would have seen me. If I had won that kind of money, I would’ve been checking my mirrors.”

Bosch nodded and thought about everything for a few moments.

“When exactly did she make that swerve between the lanes?” he then asked.

“Almost as soon as we got up on the freeway. Like I said, my guy got ahead of the both of us. So I dropped behind her and was kind of using her car to shield myself from my guy-in case he was watching the mirrors. So she easily might’ve thought I was on her instead of him.”

Turnbull poured more coffee into his cup and then offered the glass pot to Bosch and Gunn but both passed on the refill.

“I just remembered something,” Turnbull said. “Something that goes with her thinking I was following her.”

“What was it?” Bosch asked.

“About ten minutes after she did the swerve, she kind of made an evasive maneuver. At the time I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep and almost missed her exit, but now I see it. She was trying to see if she had a tail.”

“What exactly did she do?”

“We were on the ten going west, right? Well, we were coming up on La Cienega, and at the last moment she all of a sudden cut across two lanes to go down the exit.”

“You mean like she was trying to see if somebody would follow her down the ramp?”

“Yeah, like if I would make the same cut across the freeway as her. It was a good move. It would reveal a tail or lose a tail, either way.”

Bosch nodded and looked at Gunn to see if she had anything to add or ask but she remained silent.

“Did you see her again after that?” Bosch asked.

“No, not after that,” Turnbull said. “She was gone in the night.”

In more ways than one, Bosch thought. He ended the interview. He needed to get away from Turnbull to make a call.

“Mr. Turnbull, we’re sorry to have gotten you up after you worked all night,” he said. “But you’ve helped us and we appreciate it.”

Turnbull raised his hands like his efforts were minimal.

“I’m just glad I’m no longer a suspect,” Turnbull said. “Good luck catching the bad guy.”

Bosch put his empty cup on the counter.

“Thanks for the coffee, too.”

Bosch pulled his phone as soon as they were out of the building and heading back to the car. He called his partner.

“It’s me,” he said. “Are you at the scene yet?”

“Just got here. I’ve got the search warrant for the house.”

“Good. But before you go in, I want you to get with Dussein, the forensics guy.”

“Okay.”

“Tell him to pull the interior of the Mustang apart if he has to but I think the missing money is still in it somewhere.”

“You mean it wasn’t a follow home?”

“I don’t know what it was yet but when she was driving home I think she thought she was being followed. I think she hid the money in the car somewhere, somewhere within reach while driving. Maybe just under the seat but I would assume Dussein already looked there.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Call me back if you get something.”

Bosch closed the phone. He didn’t speak until they were back in her car.

“I think we’re back to the husband,” he said. “What Turnbull told us reinforces the theory. If she was scared or thought she might’ve been followed, she wouldn’t have swung the door open until she was ready to make a quick move to the house. She thought it was safe.”

Gunn nodded.

“I forgot to tell you something about the purse,” she said.

“The victim’s purse? What about it?”

“She had a small can of pepper spray in it. She never took it out.”

Bosch thought about this for a moment and saw how it fit with the current theory.

“Again, if she thought she had been followed, and even if she believed she had lost the follower with her maneuver on the freeway, she wouldn’t have opened that door and left the pepper spray in her purse unless she felt safe.”

“Unless someone was there to make her feel safe.”

“Her husband. Maybe he was holding the gun in plain sight and she thought it was for her protection. She opened the door and he turned it on her.”

Gunn nodded like she believed the scenario but then she played devil’s advocate.

“But we can’t prove any of that. We don’t have anything. No gun, no motive. Even if we find the money in the car, it’s not going to matter. It doesn’t preclude a follow home and we won’t be able to charge him.”

“Then it’s an eight-by-eight case.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means it’s going to come down to what happens in that eight-by-eight room at Parker Center. We go talk to him and wait for him to make a mistake.”

“He’s a professional poker player, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

It took them half an hour to get from Hollywood to Parker Center downtown because of the morning rush hour. In the third-floor Robbery-Homicide Division office Bosch watched David Blitzstein through one-way glass for five minutes as he readied himself for the interview. Blitzstein didn’t look like a man mourning the murder of his wife. He reminded Bosch more of a caged tiger. He was pacing. There was little space for this with the table and two chairs taking up most of the interview room but Blitzstein was moving from one wall to the opposite wall, repeatedly going back and forth. Each time his pattern brought him within inches of the one-way glass-mirrored on his side-and each time that he stared into his own eyes he was also unknowingly staring into Bosch’s eyes on the other side.