Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“What is this place?” he said, still staring out and with his back to her. “Where is everybody?”

“There isn’t anybody. We just used this in a money-laundering sting. So it’s been empty. Half of this building is empty. The economy. This was a real law office but it went out of business. So we just sort of borrowed it. The management was happy for the government subsidy.”

“They were washing money from drugs? Guns?”

“You know I can’t say, Harry. I am sure you’ll read about it in a few months. You’ll put it together then.”

Bosch nodded as he remembered the firm’s name on the door. Franco, Becerra & Itzuris: FBI. Clever.

“I wonder if management will tell the next tenants that this place was used by the bureau to take down some bad people. Friends of those bad people could come looking.”

She didn’t respond to that. She just invited him to sit down at the table. He did, taking a good look at her as she sat across from him. Her hair was down, which was unusual. He had seen her that way before but not while she was on duty. The dark ringlets framed her face and helped direct attention to her dark eyes.

“The firm’s refrigerator is empty or I’d offer you something to drink.”

“I’m fine.”

She opened the box and started taking out the files he had given her.

“Rachel, I really appreciate this,” Bosch said. “I hope it didn’t disrupt your life too much.”

“The work, no. I enjoyed it. But you, Harry, you coming back into my life was a disruption.”

Bosch wasn’t expecting that.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in a relationship and I’d told him about you. About the single-bullet theory, all of that. So he wasn’t happy that I’ve been spending my nights off working this up for you.”

Bosch wasn’t sure about how to respond. Rachel Walling always hid deeper messages in the things she said. He wasn’t sure if there was more to be considered than what she had just said out loud.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “Did you tell him it was only work, that I just wanted your professional opinion? That I went to you because I can trust you and you’re the best at this?”

“He knows I’m the best at it, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s just do this.”

She opened a file.

“My ex-wife is dead,” he said. “She was killed last year in Hong Kong.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d blurted it out like that. She looked up at him sharply and he knew she hadn’t known.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Bosch just nodded, deciding not to tell her the details.

“What about your daughter?”

“She lives with me now. She’s doing okay but it’s been pretty tough on her. It’s only been four months.”

She nodded and then seemed to lose her grounding as she took in what had just been said.

“What about you? I assume it’s been rough for you, too.”

He nodded but couldn’t think of the right words. He had his daughter fully in his life now, but at a terrible cost. He realized that he had brought the subject up but couldn’t talk about it.

“Look,” he said, “that was weird. I don’t know why I just laid that on you. You mentioned the single bullet and I remember I told you about her. We can talk about it some other time. I mean, if you want. Let’s just get to the case now. Is that okay?”

“Yes, sure. I was just thinking about your daughter. To lose her mother and then have to move so far from the place she knows. I mean, I know living with you will be fine, but it’s… quite an adjustment.”

“Yeah, but they say kids are resilient because they actually are. She’s got a lot of friends already and is doing well in school. It’s been a major adjustment for both of us but I think she’ll come out okay.”

“And how will you come out?”

Bosch held her eyes for a moment before answering.

“I’ve already come out ahead. I have my daughter with me and she’s the best thing in my life.”

“That’s good, Harry.”

“It is.”

She broke eye contact and finished removing the files and photos from the box. Bosch could see the transformation. She was now all business, an FBI profiler ready to report her findings. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook. It was in a folding leather case with a detective shield embossed on the cover. He opened it and got ready to write.

“I want to start with the photos,” she said.

“Fine.”

She spread out four photos of Melissa Landy’s body in the Dumpster, turning them to face him. She then added two photos from the autopsy in a row above these. Photos of a dead child were never easy to look at for Bosch. But these were particularly difficult. He stared for a long moment before coming to the realization that the clutch in his gut was due to the setting of the body in a Dumpster. For the girl to be disposed of like that seemed almost like a statement about the victim and an added insult to those who loved her.

“The Dumpster,” he said. “You think that was chosen as a statement?”

Walling paused as if considering it for the first time.

“I’m actually going at it from a different standpoint. I think that it was an almost spontaneous choice. That it wasn’t part of a plan. He needed a place to dump the body where he wouldn’t be seen and it wouldn’t be immediately found. He knew about that Dumpster behind that theater and he used it. It was a convenience, not a statement.”

Bosch nodded. He leaned forward and wrote a note on his pad to remind himself to go back to Clinton and ask about the Dumpster. The El Rey was in the Wilshire corridor the Aardvark drivers worked. It might have been familiar to them.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start things off in the wrong direction,” he said as he wrote.

“That’s okay. The reason I wanted to start with the photos of the girl is that I believe that this crime may have been misunderstood from the very beginning.”

“Misunderstood?”

“Well, it appears that the original investigators took the crime scene at face value and looked at it as the result of the suspect’s kill plan. In other words, Jessup grabbed this girl, and his plan was to strangle her and leave her in the Dumpster. This is evidenced by the profile that was drawn up of the crime and submitted to the FBI and the California Department of Justice for comparison to other crimes on record.”

She opened a file and pulled out the lengthy profile and submission forms prepared by Detective Kloster twenty-four years earlier.

“Detective Kloster was looking for similar crimes that he might be able to attach Jessup to. He got zero hits and that was the end of that.”

Bosch had spent several days studying the original case file and knew everything that Walling was telling him. But he let her run with it without interruption because he had a feeling she would take him somewhere new. That was her beauty and art. It didn’t matter that the FBI didn’t recognize it and use her to the best of her abilities. He always would.

“I think what happened was that this case had a faulty profile from the beginning. Add to that the fact that back then the data banks were obviously not as sophisticated or as inclusive as they are now. This whole angle was misdirected and wrong and so no wonder they hit a dead end with it.”

Bosch nodded and wrote a quick note.

“You tried to rebuild the profile?” he asked.

“As much as I could. And the starting point is right here. The photos. Take a look at her injuries.”

Bosch leaned across the table and over the first row of photographs. He actually didn’t see injuries to the girl. She had been dropped haphazardly into the almost full trash bin. There must have been stage building or a renovation project going on inside the theater, because the bin contained mostly construction refuse. Sawdust, paint buckets, small pieces of cut and broken wood. There were small cuts of wallboard and torn plastic sheeting. Melissa Landy was faceup near one of the corners of the Dumpster. Bosch didn’t see a drop of blood on her or her dress.