Michael Connelly - The Drop

“I just call him that. Now, I mean. He reminded me of Jack Nicholson in that Stephen King movie. The ‘Here’s Johnny’ guy, chasing after the boy with an ax all the time. That was what it was like for me, only no ax. He didn’t need no ax.”

“What about his real name? Did you know it?”

“Nope, never did.”

“Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure. The guy fucked me up for life. If I knew his name, I’d remember it. The only thing I remember was his nickname, what everybody called him.”

“What was it?”

A small, thin smile played on Pell’s lips. He had something everyone wanted and he was going to work it to his advantage. Bosch could tell. All those years in prison, he had learned to play the angles.

“What do I get for it?” he asked.

Bosch was ready.

“You might get to put the guy who tortured you away for good.”

“What makes you think he’s even still alive?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Just a guess. The reports say your mother had you when she was seventeen. So she was about twenty-five when she took up with this guy. My guess is that he wasn’t too much older than her. Twenty-two years ago. . he’s probably in his fifties and he’s probably still out there doing what he does.”

Pell stared down at the floor and Bosch wondered if he was seeing a memory from the time he was in the man’s control.

Stone cleared her voice and spoke.

“Clay, remember how we’ve talked about evil and whether people are born that way or if it is given to them? About how acts can be evil but the person committing them is not?”

Pell nodded.

“This man is evil. Look what he did to you. And Detective Bosch believes he committed other evil acts on other victims.”

Pell nodded again.

“That fucking belt had letters on the buckle. He used to hit me with that buckle. The fucker. After a while I just didn’t want to get hit anymore. It was easier just to give him what he wanted. .”

Bosch waited. There was no need to ask another question. Stone seemed to sense it as well. After a long moment Pell nodded a third time and spoke.

“Everybody called him Chill. Including my mother.”

Bosch wrote it down.

“You said the belt buckle had letters on it. You mean like initials? What were they?”

“C. H.”

Bosch wrote it down. His adrenaline started to kick in. He might not have a full name but he was getting close. For a split second an image came to him. His fist raised and knocking on a door. No, pounding on a door. A door that would be opened by the man known as Chill.

Pell continued to talk unbidden.

“I thought of Chill last year when I saw all that stuff on the news about the Grim Sleeper. Chill had photos like that guy, too.”

The Grim Sleeper was the name given to a serial killer suspect and the task force investigation that sought him. A single killer was suspected in multiple murders of women, but there were large spaces of time between killings and it was as though he had gone to sleep and was hibernating. When a suspect was identified and captured the year before, investigators found hundreds of photos of women in his possession. Most of the women were naked and in sexually suggestive poses in the shots. The investigation was ongoing as to who the women were and what had happened to them.

“He had photos of women?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, the women he’d fucked. Naked pictures. His trophies. He took pictures of my mother. I saw ’em. He had one of those cameras where the picture just came right out so he didn’t have to worry about taking film to the drugstore and getting found out. Back before they had digital.”

“A Polaroid.”

“Yeah, right. Polaroid.”

“It is not unusual,” Stone said. “For men who physically hurt women or not. It’s a form of control. Ownership. Skins on the wall, keeping score. A symptom of a very controlling personality. In today’s world of digital cameras and Internet porn, you see this more and more.”

“Yeah, well then, I guess Chill was a pioneer,” Pell said. “He didn’t have no computer. He kept his pictures in a shoe box. That’s how we moved away from him.”

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked.

Pell tightened his lips for a moment before answering.

“He took a picture of me with his dick in my mouth. And he put it in his shoebox. One day I stole it and left it where my mom would see it. We moved out that day.”

“Were there other photos of boys or men in that shoebox?” Bosch asked.

“I remember seeing one other. It was a kid like me but I didn’t know who it was.”

Bosch wrote down a few more notes. Pell’s information that Chill was apparently a pansexual predator was a key part of the emerging profile. He then asked if Pell could remember where they lived when he and his mother were with the man called Chill. He could only remember that they were close to Travel Town at Griffith Park, because his mother used to take him there to ride on the trains.

“Could you walk there or did you drive?”

“We took a taxi and I remember it was close. We went there a lot. I liked being on those little trains.”

It was a good note. Bosch knew Travel Town was on the north side of the park and it probably meant Pell had lived with Chill in North Hollywood or Burbank. It would help narrow things.

He then asked for a description of Chill, and Pell only described him as being white, tall and muscular.

“Did he have a job?”

“Not really. I think he was like a handyman or something. He had a lot of tools he kept in his truck.”

“What kind of truck?”

“Van, actually. Ford Econoline. That was where he made me do things to him.”

And a van would be the kind of vehicle Pell would use later to commit the same sort of crime. Bosch didn’t mention this, of course.

“How old would you say Chill was back then?” he asked.

“No idea. You’re probably right about what you said before. About five years older than my mother.”

“You don’t happen to have a photo of him with your things or in storage or something?”

Pell laughed and looked at Bosch like he thought he was an imbecile.

“You think I’d keep his picture around? I don’t even have a picture of my mother, man.”

“Sorry, had to ask. Did you ever see this guy with any women other than your mother?”

“You mean like to have sex with?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Clayton, what else do you remember about him?”

“I just remember I tried to stay away from him.”

“Do you think you could identify him?”

“What, now? After all these years?”

Bosch nodded.

“I don’t know. But I won’t ever forget the way he looked back then.”

“Do you remember anything else about the place where you lived with him? Anything that might help me find him?”

Pell thought about it and then shook his head.

“No, man, just what I said.”

“Did he have pets?”

“No, but he beat me like a dog. I guess I was his pet.”

Bosch glanced over at Stone to see if she had anything.

“What about hobbies?” she asked.

“I think his hobby was filling up that shoebox,” Pell said.

“But you never saw any of the other women from the pictures, right?” Bosch asked.

“But that didn’t mean anything. You could tell most of the pictures were taken in the van. He had an old mattress back there. He wasn’t bringing any of them home, you know?”

It was good information. Bosch wrote it all down.

“You said you saw one photo of a boy. Was that taken in the van, too?”

Pell didn’t respond at first. He had committed his own evil acts in a van and the connection was obvious.

“I don’t remember,” he finally said.