Michael Connelly: The Reversal

“I will.”

Bosch closed the phone and went back into the office. Wright was still at the window.

“I think we’re wasting our time and should shut this down,” he said.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Just came over the radio. They found the car Jessup was using. In Venice. He’s nowhere near here, Bosch.”

Bosch knew that dumping the car in Venice could merely be a misdirection. Drive out to the beach, leave the car and then double back in a cab to downtown. Nonetheless, he found himself reluctantly agreeing with Wright. They were spinning their wheels here.

“Damn it,” he said.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get him. I’m keeping one team here and one on your house. Everybody else I’m moving down into Venice.”

“And the Santa Monica Pier?”

“Already covered. Got a couple teams on the beach and nobody’s gone in or out of that location.”

Wright went on the SIS band on the radio and started redeploying his men. As Bosch listened he paced the room, trying to figure Jessup out. After a while he stepped back out to the hallway so as not to disturb Wright’s radio choreography and called Larry Gandle, his boss at RHD.

“It’s Bosch. Just checking in.”

“You still at the hotel?”

“Yeah, but we’re about to clear and head to the beach. I guess you heard they found the car.”

“Yeah, I was just there.”

Bosch was surprised. With four victims at Royce’s office, he thought Gandle would still be at the murder scene.

“The car’s clean,” Gandle said. “Jessup still has the weapon.”

“Where are you now?” Bosch asked.

“On Speedway,” Gandle said. “We just hit the room Jessup was using. Took a while to get the search warrant.”

“Anything there?”

“Not so far. This fucking guy, you see him in court wearing a suit and you think… I don’t know what you think, but the reality was, he was living like an animal.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are empty cans all over the place, food still rotting in them. Food rotting on the counter, trash everywhere. He hung blankets over the windows to black it out like a cave. He made it like a prison cell. He was even writing on the walls.”

All at once it hit him. Bosch knew who Jessup had prepared the dungeon under the pier for.

“What kind of food?” he asked.

“What?” Gandle asked.

“The canned food. What kind of food?”

“I don’t know, fruits and peaches-all kinds of stuff you can get fresh in any store you walk into. But he had it in cans. Like prison.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

Bosch closed the phone and walked quickly back into the office. Wright was off the radio now.

“Did your people go under the pier and check the storage room or just set up surveillance?”

“It’s a loose surveillance.”

“Meaning they didn’t check it out?”

“They checked the perimeter. There was no sign that anybody went under the wall. So they backed out and set up.”

“Jessup’s there. They missed him.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. Let’s go.”

Thursday, April 8, 6:35P.M.

I stood at the picture window at the end of my living room and looked out at the city with the sun dropping behind it. Jessup was out there someplace. Like a rabid animal he would be hunted, cornered and, I had no doubt, put down. It was the inevitable conclusion to his play.

Jessup was legally to blame but I couldn’t help but think about my own culpability in these dark matters. Not in any legal sense, but in a private, internal sense. I had to question whether consciously or not I had set all of this in motion on the day I sat with Gabriel Williams and agreed to cross a line in the courtroom as well as within myself. Maybe by allowing Jessup his freedom I had determined his fate as well as that of Royce and the others. I was a defense attorney, not a prosecutor. I stood for the underdog, not for the state. Maybe I had taken the steps and made the maneuvers so that there would never be a verdict and I would not have to live with it on my record and conscience.

Such were the musings of a guilty man. But they didn’t last long. My phone buzzed and I pulled it from my pocket without looking away from my view of the city.

“Haller.”

“It’s me. I thought you were coming up here.”

Maggie McFierce.

“Soon. I’m just finishing up here. Everything all right?”

“For me, yes. But probably not for Jessup. Are you watching the TV news?”

“No, what are they showing?”

“They’ve evacuated the Santa Monica Pier. Channel Five has a chopper over it. They’re not confirming that it’s related to Jessup but they said that LAPD’s SIS unit sought an okay from SMPD to conduct a fugitive apprehension. They’re on the beach moving in.”

“The dungeon? Did Jessup grab somebody?”

“If he did, they’re not saying.”

“Did you call Harry?”

“I just tried but he didn’t pick up. I think he’s probably down there on the beach.”

I broke away from the window and grabbed the television remote off the coffee table. I snapped on the TV and punched in Channel 5.

“I have it on here,” I told Maggie.

On the screen was an aerial view of the pier and the surrounding beach. It looked like there were men on the beach and they were advancing on the pier’s underside from both the north and south.

“I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s gotta be him. The dungeon he made down there was actually for himself. Like a safe house he could run to.”

“Like the prison cell he was used to. I wonder if he knows they’re coming in on him. Maybe he hears the helicopters.”

“Harry said the waves under there are so loud you couldn’t even hear a gunshot.”

“Well, we might be about to find that out.”

We watched in silence for a few moments before I spoke.

“Maggie, are the girls watching this?”

“God, no! They’re playing video games in the other room.”

“Good.”

They watched in silence. The newscaster’s voice echoing over the line as he inanely described what was on the screen. After a while Maggie asked the question that had probably been on her mind all afternoon.

“Did you think it would come to this, Haller?”

“No, did you?”

“No, never. I guess I thought everything would sort of be contained in the courtroom. Like it always is.”

“Yeah.”

“At least Jessup saved us the indignity of the verdict.”

“What do you mean? We had him and he knew it.”

“You didn’t watch any of the juror interviews, did you?”

“What, on TV?”

“Yeah, juror number ten is on every channel saying he would’ve voted not guilty.”

“You mean Kirns?”

“Yeah, the alternate that got moved into the box. Everybody else interviewed said guilty, guilty, guilty. But Kirns said not guilty, that we hadn’t convinced him. He would’ve hung the jury, Haller, and you know Williams wouldn’t have signed on for round two. Jessup would’ve walked.”

I considered this and could only shake my head. Everything was for nothing. All it took was one juror with a grudge against society, and Jessup would’ve walked. I looked up from the TV screen and out toward the western horizon to the distance, where I knew Santa Monica hugged the edge of the Pacific. I thought I could see the media choppers circling.

“I wonder if Jessup will ever know that,” I said.

Thursday, April 8, 6:55P.M.

The sun was dropping low over the Pacific and burning a brilliant green path across the surface. Bosch stood close to Wright on the beach, a hundred yards south of the pier. They were both looking down at the 5 × 5 video screen contained in a front pack strapped to Wright’s chest. He was commanding the SIS takedown of Jason Jessup. On the screen was a murky image of the dimly lit storage facility under the pier. Bosch had been given ears but no mike. He could hear the operation’s communications but could not contribute to them. Anything he had to say would have to go through Wright.