Michael Connelly: The Drop

“So this blood was collected and stored,” he said, a statement meant to draw further explanation.

“Yes,” Shuler said. “Because it was a smear it was swabbed. Back then, they typed it. O positive. The swab was stored in a tube and we found it still in Property when we pulled the case. The blood had turned to powder.”

He tapped the top of the archive box with a pen.

Bosch’s phone started to vibrate in his pocket. Normally, he would let the call go to message, but his daughter was home sick from school and alone. He needed to make sure she wasn’t calling. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. It wasn’t his daughter. It was a former partner, Kizmin Rider, now a lieutenant assigned to the OCP — Office of the Chief of Police. He decided he would return her call after the meeting. They had lunch together about once a month and he assumed she was free today, or calling because she’d heard about him getting approved for another four years on the DROP. He shoved the phone back into his pocket.

“Did you open the tube?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Shuler said.

“Okay, so four months ago you sent the tube containing the swab and what was left of the blood out to the regional lab, right?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Shuler said.

Bosch flipped through the murder book to the autopsy report. He was acting like he was more interested in what he was seeing than what he was saying.

“And at that time, did you submit anything else to the lab?”

“From the Price case?” Dolan asked. “No, that was the only biological evidence they came up with back at the time.”

Bosch nodded, hoping she would keep talking.

“But back then it didn’t lead to anything,” she said. “They never came up with a suspect. Who’d they come up with on the cold hit?”

“We’ll get to that in a second,” Bosch said. “What I meant was, did you submit to the lab from any other cases you were working? Or was this all you had going?”

“No, that was it,” Shuler said, his eyes squinting in suspicion. “What’s going on here, Harry?”

Bosch reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out the hit sheet. He slid it across the table to Shuler.

“The hit comes back to a sexual predator who would look real good for this except for one thing.”

Shuler unfolded the sheet and he and Dolan leaned together to read it, just as Bosch and Chu had earlier.

“What’s that?” Dolan said, not picking up on the significance of the birth date yet. “This guy looks perfect.”

“He’s perfect now,” Bosch said. “But back then he was only eight years old.”

“You’re kidding,” Dolan said.

“What the fuck?” Shuler added.

Dolan pulled the sheet away from her partner as if to see it clearer and to double-check the birth date. Shuler leaned back and looked at Bosch with those suspicious eyes.

“So you think we fucked up and mixed up cases,” he said.

“Nope,” Bosch said. “The lieutenant asked us to check out the possibility but I don’t see any fuckup on this end.”

“So it happened at the lab,” Shuler said. “Do you realize that if they screwed things up at regional, every defense lawyer in the county is going to be able to raise doubt about DNA matches that come out of there?”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” Bosch said. “Which is why you should keep this under your hats until we know what happened. There are other possibilities.”

Dolan held up the hit sheet.

“Yeah, what if there is no fuckup anywhere in the line? What if it’s really this kid’s blood on that dead girl?”

“An eight-year-old boy snatches a nineteen-year-old girl off the street, rapes and strangles her and dumps the body four blocks away?” Chu asked. “Never happened.”

“Well, maybe he was there,” Dolan said. “Maybe this was how he got his start as a predator. You see his record. This guy fits — except for his age.”

Bosch nodded.

“Maybe,” he said. “Like I said, there are other possibilities. No reason to panic yet.”

His phone started to vibrate again. He pulled it and saw it was Kiz Rider again. Two calls in five minutes, he decided he’d better take it. This wasn’t about lunch.

“I have to step out for a second.”

He got up and answered the call as he stepped out of the conference room into the hallway.

“Kiz?”

“Harry, I’ve been trying to get to you with a heads-up.”

“I’m in a meeting. What heads-up?”

“You are about to get a forthwith from the OCP.”

“You want me to come up to ten?”

In the new PAB, the chief’s suite of offices was on the tenth floor, complete with a private courtyard balcony that looked out across the civic center.

“No, Sunset Strip. You’re going to be told to go to a scene and take over a case. And you’re not going to like it.”

“Look, Lieutenant, I just got a case this morning. I don’t need another one.”

He thought that using her formal title would communicate his wariness. Forthwiths and assignments out of the OCP always carried high jingo — political overtones. It was sometimes hard to navigate your way through it.

“He’s not going to give you a choice here, Harry.”

“He” being the chief of police.

“What’s the case?”

“A jumper at the Chateau Marmont.”

“Who was it?”

“Harry, I think you should wait for the chief to call you. I just wanted to—”

“Who was it, Kiz? If you know anything about me, I think you know I can keep a secret until it’s no longer a secret.”

She paused before answering.

“From what I understand, there is not a lot that is recognizable — he came down seven floors onto concrete. But the initial ID is George Thomas Irving. Age forty-six of eight—”

“Irving as in Irvin Irving? As in Councilman Irvin Irving?”

“Scourge of the LAPD in general and one Detective Harry Bosch in particular. Yes, one and the same. It’s his son, and Councilman Irving has insisted to the chief that you take over the investigation. The chief said no problem.”

Bosch paused with his mouth open for a moment before responding.

“Why does Irving want me? He’s spent most of his careers in police and politics trying to end mine.”

“This I don’t know, Harry. I only know that he wants you.”

“When did this come in?”

“The call came in at about five forty-five this morning. My understanding is that it is unclear when it actually happened.”

Bosch checked his watch. The case was more than three hours old. That was quite late to be coming into a death investigation. He’d be starting out at a disadvantage.

“What’s to investigate?” he asked. “You said it was a jumper.”

“Hollywood originally responded and they were going to wrap it up as a suicide. The councilman arrived and is not ready to sign off on that. That’s why he wants you.”

“And does the chief understand that I have a history with Irving that—”

“Yes, he does. He also understands that he needs every vote he can get on the council if we ever want to get overtime flowing to the department again.”

Bosch saw his boss, Lieutenant Duvall, enter the hallway from the Open-Unsolved Unit’s door. She made a There you are! gesture and started toward him.

“Looks like I’m about to get the official word,” Bosch said into the phone. “Thanks for the heads-up, Kiz. Doesn’t make any sense to me, but thanks. If you hear anything else, let me know.”

“Harry, you be careful with this. Irving’s old but he’s still got teeth.”

“I know that.”

Bosch closed his phone just as Duvall got to him, holding out a piece of paper.